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POPS Obama’s Poems Show Real Talent .....example of the genre.” Of note, Politico observes that “the temperate legal language doesn't display the rhetorical heights that run through his memoir, published a few years later.” But then somehow, those few years later, this 33 year-old amateur with no paper trail beyond a hack legal note and a poem about fig-stomping apes produced what Time Magazine has called--with a straight face-- “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.” The public is asked to believe that Obama did this on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I don’t buy this canard for a minute. To enhance the science of this literary investigation, I made some inquiries into the academy. . .he encouraged me instead “to do what you're already doing . . . good old-fashioned literary detective work.” Given that advice, I dug deeper into the memoir of the man who, I believe, tortured Dreams From My Father . . .
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POPSNobel Judge tells American writers "You Are Too Ignorant" Wow, what a slap in the face. Responses range from accusing Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury, of not reading enough American literature to just trying to generate publicity. The last American to win a prize for literature was Toni Morrison in 1993.
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POPSPullman on Religion INTRO; Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy constitutes one of the finest reading experiences for children I’ve ever seen. I read them as an adult, on the advice of a literary colleague, and fell under their spell immediately. They are fantasy books, for sure, but with a strong rational and anti-authority philosophy. And although I don’t think of them as purely anti-religious, if your religion is one with an authoritarian streak then … Interesting character.
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POPSHot New Steampunk Couture! Steampunk Couture is the result of a beautiful marriage of Neo-Victorian wear and our post-apocalyptic future. "Born wet and wide-eyed as a literary genre near the end of the last century, "steampunk" is just a word encompassing a litany of sins. The flagrant coupling of Victorian aesthetic, and phantastic technology. A dash of swashbuckle, a pinch of pathos, simmer until stirred or disturbed. Haberdashery sprung fully-formed from brandishing bustles, boots, and bodices (or monocles, spats, moustaches,) in shades of sepia, dashes of dun, blinks of black, coils of copper, illums of ivory, and jots of jewel-tone. Motifs meander from gearwheels to jacquard, stopping off at morbid, metallic, or romantic along the way. Accessorize with your favorite protective headwear. Let Kato, artist and craftist, escort you through her vogue's gallery of gamine garb. Tops, bottoms, and side-to-sides fit for adventure aloft
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POPSBalsamic Reduction with Berries The other night I was dining with the Wild Writing Women at Puccini and Pinetti. We always go there after our first Wednesday of every month Literary Salon at the Monticello Inn. The restaurant is right next door to the hotel.
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POPSBrave New World of Digital Intimacy 
It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.
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POPSToday's word of the day: Hendiadys A "hendiadys" (fr. Gk. "one through two") is a literary figure in which a pair of concepts in a subordinate relationship are presented as conjoined. Examples: "nice and warm" instead of "nicely warm"; "sound and fury" instead of "furious sound"; "pain and toil" intead of "painful toil"; and so forth. First spotted in Robert Alter's footnote to Genesis 5.29.
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POPSLiterary Classics: Travel and Adventure Without Leaving Home The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton This one is sharp and witty, with a great story and brilliant psychological insight into what it means to be a woman in a consumer culture—which is something that hasn't changed all that much since Wharton's day. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini A startling work of self-justification and score settling, this autobiography has all the action and romance you'd find in a gripping historical novel. Renaissance artist, friend of Michelangelo, favorite of popes, and rival to cardinals, Cellini was also a street fighter, a philanderer, an egoist, and quite possibly a murderer. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy This is a big sweeping novel about a lot of very important things, like social class, politics, and agriculture. But it's also a great, compelling romance. Just don't read it on a train. You'll have to read it to find out why.
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POPSNew York or Nude York ? the elite wanting to undress and show off it's dirty laundry as well as others! New York that "cruel mistress" says "STRIP" NOW ! I want it out ,all out .NOW !
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