Cleatus Rattan is a former Marine and rancher. He’s currently Texas’ Poet Laureate. “Writing poetry in Texas, though, doesn’t win you many friends. In fact, he says, his poems about how dead his hometown of Cisco is (population: 3,183) have made him unpopular there. It’s a town, he writes, ‘with no plans to rebuild. The streetlights dim’.”
Tag: 02.18.04
Book Groups Petition To Get Rid Of Patriot Act Provision
The American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the writer’s group PEN American Center are mounting a signature drive to petition lawmakers to remove the section of the Patriot Act that allows law enforcement officials to see records of what library and bookstore patrons read.
Met Closes Tombs Again After Crowds Get Too Big
The Metropolitan Museum in New York opened the insides of some ancient Egyptian tombs last month but has suddenly had to close them. The “museum had removed protective glass screens from the tombs of Raemkai and Perneb Jan. 29, allowing visitors full views of interior limestone carvings for the first time in 90 years. But a crush of some 24,000 visitors since the unveiling has put the humidity at unacceptable limits.”
Why Did Chicago Museum Suddenly Close?
An architecture and design museum in suburban Chicago suddenly closed its doors in December, and no one seems to know why. “Village officials have been trying to reach Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, director of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, since the museum closed its doors without notice. Artworks were left outside the museum, exposed to the elements and potential theft, and dozens of lights were left on in offices.”
Pasternak To Be Published In Russia Again
The works of Boris Pasternak were banned from publication for 30 years by the Soviet government. Now the writer’s complete works will be published in Russia. “All 11 volumes are set to be published by February 2005 to mark the 115th anniversary of Pasternak’s birth. The first two volumes, including poems written between 1912 and 1959, have already been printed by Slovo publishers. The nine others will also be published before February next year.”
When Biographers Over-Identify With Their Subjects
A biography of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson leaves Daniel Asa Rose distrustful of biographer Susan Cheever. “Can a biographer be said to have so much understanding that she overidentifies with her subject? Is the biographer’s function to plead her subject’s case (“he was not a perfect man, but he was the perfect man for the job,” his “humanness does not diminish him, it makes him a writer, guide, and teacher,” etc.), or to let the unvarnished facts speak for themselves? When does discretion become a veil? Is there such a thing, in a biographer, as too much heart?”
America’s Closing Borders (Artists Too)
“According to organisations connected with film, theatre, music, opera and dance, new American immigration and visa policies are making it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for foreign artists of all sorts to come to the US to perform and show their work. No one, it seems, is exempt.”
Fashionable – What Plays, Why And When
How is it that plays come in and out of fashion? “If consistent themes emerge in new plays, it must be for an underlying social reason. And if classic texts emerge in strange clusters or pairs, it can’t be on purely pragmatic grounds.”
The Ongoing Pillaging Of Iraq
Turns out the looting of Iraq’s National Museum was a small thing compared to the pi;;aging of Iraqi Archaeological sites in the past year. “The market in illicit antiquities is global. Along with trafficking in drugs and arms, it is one of the most widespread crimes. Iraq has lately become the crux of the problem of the global black market in antiquities because of the increased amount of theft.”