I contend that critique is not solely and perhaps not even primarily negative in character: it also has an important synthetic function, uniting historical and interpretive modes of inquiry in such a way as to invest its objects of study with cultural and historical significance.

McLaughlin examines the relationship between poetry and philosophy in light of Immanuel Kant's theory of force.

We has them. I want a cheezburger, and I can has cheezburger, but I don't want to want one.

There's a way in which everything you see in a poem should be obvious when you see it, should be a duh!-moment.

In a recent NPR piece TV critic Eric Deggans cites shows like "Hell on Wheels," Sons of Anarchy," "Dexter," and "Breaking Bad" as evidence of a proliferations of television programs featuring "characters the audience likes and wants to see succeed, even though they act an awful lot like villains.

Ben Wolfson has a really great comment to my last post.

There once was a man from NantucketWhose life was a sham. It was muck. ItWas froth of the seaWhere he'd tried to be free

I love this moment in China Miéville's The City & the City: The narrator (for this is an I-book), Inspector Tyador Borlu, is a noir cop in a fictional Balkan capital, Corwi is his assistant, and in their language aj Tyrko means Turkish-style.

How can you use the market place to predict future classics?  How could you even bet on the literary future?  EBay has found a way -- a really interesting one.  The futures markets tell us that Darren Shan (author of the young adult series Cirque du Freak) is more than twice as valuable as of today than New Yorker darling David Mitchell.  But Ken Follett is a cut above that.How do I know?

Tomorrow I leave for RMMLA, which should be a blast. My new friend philosopher Peter Gratton will be there. I'm going to do a panel with object-oriented philosophers Ian Bogost and Levi Bryant. Ian and Levi have books that are imminent and marvelously complementary, both on OOO.