There’s no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going.

Today’s Specials: e.e. cummings / Megafaun / Eleanor Friedberger


“You’re going to love this. You’re going to just love it.” –Willy Wonka


This conversation with a silent man, this continual conversion of principles, of what we think doesn’t make any sense . . . of what we say is brand new and what we say is the same old thing and what we say is not as good as what was done in the past and what we say is better than ever before. One person’s inscrutability is another’s, well, something else. Such has always been the case. It’s why I keep going back to this issue. The reception of e.e. cummings is a great example.

Here are a few negative things written about his poetry, circa the 1930s:

Harriet Monroe, while editor of Poetry, wrote of his poetry: “Mr. Cummings has an eccentric system of typography which, in our opinion, has nothing to do with the poem, but intrudes itself irritatingly, like scratched or blurred spectacles, between it and the reader’s mind.”

Another reviewer went further: “His typography is so perverse that the reader is scared off before he has gone very far. The puzzle of his punctuation is not even an amusing one; it certainly is not worth solving.”

So there we have it, right? Such run the lessons of the past.

And then, revisiting one’s decisions, I instantly want to change my mind about my favorite albums from 2011. Over the last few days, looking at the lists of others, I’ve really been enjoying the albums from Megafaun and Eleanor Friedberger.

Here are a few songs, to give you something of a feel for them:

Megafaun by Crammed Discs

06. Eleanor friedberger - My Mistakes by Republic of Music

Eleanor Friedberger - Owl's Head Park by MergeRecords



[concise outline of some reflections concerning fire]