Some remarks about some things
notes, investigations, digressions galore
Ted Burke
- Location
- San Diego, California,
- Birthday
- July 15
- Title
- Bookseller, writer, musician
- Bio
- Bookseller, musician, writer and poet living and working in San Diego, California. His writing has appeared in the San Diego Reader, Kicks, San Diego Door, Roadwork, Revolt in Style,and City Works.His poems have been included in the anthologies Small Rain: 8 poets from San Diego (1996,DG Wills Books),Ocean Hiway: eight poets in San Diego (1981,Wild Mustard Press) , and is the author of many chapbooks, including Hand Grenade, Open Every Window,No One Home and City Times,limited editions published by his own Old House Press.
MY RECENT POSTS
- A goddamned shame
February 12, 2012 06:29PM - The shiny lights of the season
February 11, 2012 01:15PM - Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas,
and the genius of his lyrics.
- Slate Magazine
February 11, 2012 10:41AM - The facts are what they are
February 10, 2012 01:17PM - Chair
February 10, 2012 10:24AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “@George Hoffman:
Actually, Mailer didn't refer
to himself
as
"Aquarius"…”
January 01, 2012 07:12PM - “Mailer's meditation on
violence and evil will not be
every
one's idea of a good
n…”
January 01, 2012 07:07PM - “@Miguella: His
contradictions were what made
his brilliance
exasperating; I
sup…”
December 17, 2011 10:40AM - “Thanks wendy. It's not
that I'm against subjecting a
work to
critical
examination…”
August 14, 2011 06:44PM - “The alternative is up to
each of us, individually. It
is one
thing to have a
hero…”
June 14, 2011 03:03AM
Ted Burke's Links
- New list
- Salon
- New York Times
- Slate.com
- The Nation
- Like it or not
FEBRUARY 12, 2012 6:29PM
A goddamned shame
To be sure, after the shock of Whitney Houston's death wanesa bit and we can again feel the chill in the air and the heat emanating fromthe desk lamp, a professional sourpuss or two will attempt a cultural postmortem on the event, excoriating media commentaries and fan reaction alike forreducing the… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 11, 2012 1:15PM
The shiny lights of the season
FEBRUARY 11, 2012 10:41AM
Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas, and the genius of his lyrics. - Slate Magazine
Leonard Cohen’s Old
Ideas, and the genius of his lyrics. - Slate Magazine:
Jan Swafford essentially argues in her Slate
article that Leonard Cohen is a better lyricist than Bob Dylan, or
anyone else for that matter who has bothered to compose rhyme to
melody. A broad premise , typical for/… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 10, 2012 1:17PM
The facts are what they are
Little or nothing comes of losing one's cool in the manner of letting the grip of rage tighten around your neck and shoulders and so create the headache that is no less than a battering ram or giant mallet that smashes the last restraint of propriety and frees one to vent… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 10, 2012 10:24AM
Chair
I
wastold to have a seat while the managers finished their discussion
in the otherroom, but I looked hard and long at the chair they
offered me, a kitchen chairwith a vinyl covered cushion that was
tan colored and creased in an ineptmachine tooled method to make
the surface appear like… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 10, 2012 12:46AM
There
There is nothing else to do. All you get in return is a bag
full of candy wrappers and wads of chewing gum scraped from under
school desks. Neither one of us thought of saying a prayer should
the elevator cord snap suddenly and send us to a horrible,
flattening death,… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 10, 2012 12:44AM
Red Pennies
There's nothing but red
pennies on the table top, tarnished copper coins that have
travelled the length of the city with once being drawn out by
fumbling fingers seeking bus fare, or that last two pennies offered
in a purchase to round out the change to some even,
coin-less
denomination.
FEBRUARY 9, 2012 6:13PM
A higher power with no sense of irony
I heard during a lecture that Thomas Pynchon
had writtensomewhere that God is the original conspiracy theory; I
haven't found thesource of the quote, but the saying appears in
many places around the Internet,and it seems that the sentiment has
resonated loudly with quite a few. Whetherthere is an all… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 6, 2012 10:36AM
Samuel Beckett goes to the drug store in Oakland
There are not enough words in the dictionary to get across those areas of emotion that, while lacking the full force and heat of feelings that have bubbled up like lava from some formerly dormant crater none the less make your week a series of textured anxieties. The magazine stands you
… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 4, 2012 10:45AM
Sad Sack Generation
Laura Miller, Salon's sharp book critic, had a column in the Open.Salon blog a while back on her blog at Open Salon about the current crop of sad young literary writers. Progressing to the point where our inner lives are the principle subject matter for the middlebrow " serious nov/…
FEBRUARY 3, 2012 1:21AM
Muddy Waters
If you haven't already, check out the obscure Muddy Waters Woodstock Album. The album is
a revelation, as it has Waters stepping a few steps back from the
rocking , Chicago style back beat, raw and blistering in a fashion
only genius can achieve, and here taking up a swing…
FEBRUARY 2, 2012 3:53PM
Spielberg
It is interesting to consider which of Spielberg's are his best,
but the irony is that the director is really little else than
jittery hack without a real idea, emotion or camera move in his
style who just happens to have a brilliant
technical command of film making techniques.
There's no… Read full post »
JANUARY 27, 2012 10:45AM
Defending John Updike
JANUARY 23, 2012 10:35AM
Chet Baker and Archie Shepp
This track is attractive because the famously relaxed trumpeter Chet Baker is performingwith Archie Shepp, who is an outstanding example of the experimentalimprovisation termed "free jazz". We have here a fascinating andexciting jam highlighting a brilliant practioner of a what we'd call a mellow,mel/… Read full post »
JANUARY 21, 2012 10:31AM
Tree of Life with Shallow Roots
There's much one can say about a movie's beautiful , lush
photography when it works with a structure--a good script, a
graspable plot and ideas an audience can take interest in,
credible, complex characters--but pretty pictures by themselves
cannot save a film like Terrence Mallick's "Tree of Life"
f/
… Read full post »
JANUARY 21, 2012 12:00AM
a fine poem by Joshua Rivkin
More than a few of us, I wager, have sat with friends in cafes and
bistros stealing occasional glances at the people seated at the
table just across the room and wondered what it was like to be
them, to be with them, to live in their skins, in their
world.… Read full post »
JANUARY 20, 2012 10:16AM
JOHNNY OTIS
Band leader, songwriter, singer producer and Rock and Roll
Hall of Famer
Johnny Otis has passed away. was an
American Master, a truly great man who helped bring a fantastic
number of brilliant rhythm and blues artists to greater fame and
acclaim.
I had the pleasure to meet and… Read full post »
JANUARY 19, 2012 10:59PM
Muscle poetry
The poem
"Richard Noel" is Harry Thomas' slap atobscurantist modernism in
all its forms, resisting the lure of diffuse and theoblique for the
clipped, staccato version of Rudyard Kipling, although
Kiplinghimself would have furnished the fife and brass to
accentuate and enliven therattatatat of the mi… Read full post »
JANUARY 18, 2012 12:35AM
Stop Internet Censorship
JANUARY 17, 2012 12:48AM
There is little else but ill will circulating through the tubes of the internet
There is little else but
ill will circulating through the tubes of the internet this
morning, general grousing, gripes and jeremiads about little of
consequence, although I would have to lend credence to the notion
that a lot of anger is generated by site specific fears of losing
one's financial secu
… Read full post »
JANUARY 16, 2012 1:33PM
Robert Coover
Robert Coover is one of the most interesting writers from that
generation of metafictionists--he is what I think of when I think
of a writer taking apart a narrative strategy and making the parts
fit in new and maddening ways.Spanking the Maid was
deliciously skewed where Coover retells, reshapes, re…
JANUARY 15, 2012 6:30PM
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore's "Poetry" is widely anthologized and often cited,
and it shouldn't be a mystery as to why this poem among the
hundreds she wrote is the one that an otherwise indifferent
audience remembers: it's a poem about poetry. She rather handily
summarizes an array of cliches, stereotypes and re… Read full post »
JANUARY 12, 2012 4:59PM
TR HUMMER
This is a piece from 2009 about one of T.R.Hummer's poems that
was published in Slate. I run again here because I am still making
sense of the current poem that Slate has on display,and
because Hummer is a superb poet more of us should know about and
read.--tb
______
There are those… Read full post »
JANUARY 6, 2012 10:43AM
Walking Backwards
The construction of this poem, consisting of so many dependent
clauses revealing previous events and perceptions after the poet
commences to speak of his walk, makes me think of someone
attempting to conduct a tour of a neighborhood while walking
backwards, spicing up his odd stride with a monologue… Read full post »
Verbal Remedy AKA Denise
John Hughes
Dorinda D.
Paul Levinson
Joan Walsh
Karen Templer
Salon.com