No comment.

I'm reading "What Was Best About the ‘Best American Poetry’? After four decades, the annual book series is drawing to a close. Our columnist looks at what it all meant" (NYT).

By convention, the poets in each volume are invited to comment on their chosen poem. A surprising number assert the poem’s events are factual, true. Some claim the poem is self-explanatory; others explain rather overabundantly. Some abstain entirely, or use the space to deflect. See Charles Bukowski, best in 1993: “The more said about a poem, the less it becomes.” Depends on the poem. Rae Armantrout’s “Soft Money,” best in 2011, is very funny: 'They’re sexy because they pretend/not to need you,/but they’re lying,/which degrades them./They’re beneath you/and it’s hot.' It’s made even funnier by her note that reveals she was mocking Duran Duran."

Here's the post that is the reason Ayn Rand is trending on Twitter right now.

Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf:
1. A Dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest
2. Too Much Hemingway
3. Any amount of Bukowski
4. AYN. RAND.
5. Goethe
6. "Lolita is my favorite book."
7. "'Fathers and Sons' Is my favorite book."

— Jess McHugh (@MchughJess) August 24, 2020

I'm sure many of you can write better "Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf" lists!

"It’s like the suffocating rubber clown suit begins to dissolve."

David Lynch explains Transcendental Meditation. He's into it. Is it going to change his films?

“You don’t have to suffer to show suffering,” he said of the violence in his movies. The filmmaker sees no contradiction between inner harmony and external edginess.

“I heard Charles Bukowski started meditation late in his life,” Mr. Lynch said, referring to the poet laureate of Skid Row, who died in 1994. “He was an angry, angry guy, but he apparently loved meditation.”

Of course, just as meditation never got Mr. Lynch over a taste for the macabre, it never quenched Mr. Bukowski’s famous thirst for whiskey. “Well, maybe in time, it would have,” Mr. Lynch said with a smile. “In the meantime — just more enjoyment of the whiskey.”

I wonder how it would go with blogging. All the same old taunts and snark, but inside: new mellowness!