On the vital role of the arts and hermeneutics in the current political climate. 

Beauty, whether in the animal or human world, exists in the eye of the beholder. Evolution is as much about allure, sensory delight, and subjective experiences as it as about survival of the fittest.

I do not at all see why we must make an either-or choice between reading Beckett or reading Aimé Césaire, between calling out and into question “cultural desires, drives, anxieties, or prejudices” or analyzing metonymy, chiasmus, sprung rhythm, lineation, anaphora, parataxis, trochees, and so forth.

The canonization of the Moscow poet Kirill Medvedev (born 1975) seems to be taking place in real time.

By granting that aesthetic surfaces speak in a different language than literary criticism, post-critical reading permits us to broaden the aesthetic forms that count as “critical” and the ways in which critique functions through aesthetic form. Tyler Bradway calls for new grammars of aesthetic agency, ones that more expansively account for the critical and creative forces that aesthetic objects harness to press back against the impasses of their contemporary moment.

Last summer while travelling I read Moby Dick on my iPhone. I am now at a point in my life when, circumscribed by airline baggage weight restrictions, the choice between packing Moby Dick or an extra pair of shoes is no choice at all. So I downloaded a free version and tucked my phone in my pocket.

...this is part of a talk I'm going to do at Queen Mary University in London in a few weeks, at the conference Emerging Critical Environments with Kate Soper and Tim Clark (and others). I already posted the opening on my blog.

Lately I often find myself saying “I cut Lady Mary Wroth from my syllabus because the poems are terrible.”

I got back from England last week. While I was there it surprised me to see on at least two occasions a cold mound of badger flesh, large as a black plastic rubbish sack, one dead paw raised as if to ask a question in class, lying at the side of a rural road. I don't remember that sight from the days when I grew up in the country.

One of the pleasures of teaching is the ability to linger at length with students on questions such as this: « Pourquoi donc y a-t-il des fleurs ? » [Why on earth are there flowers? Philippe Jaccottet. Cahier de verdure, 1990 : 106].