confused about the ceiling

  Completed : John Ashbery, The Double Dream of Spring Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red Anne Carson, Decreation Anders Carlson-Wee, The Low Passions Franny Choi, Soft Science Louise Gluck, Averno Julian Gewirtz, Your Face My Flag Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson Joanna Klink, Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy Dong Li, The Orange Tree Rowan Riccardo Philips, Heaven Lee Ann Roripaugh, tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 Adam Scheffler, Heartworm Solmaz Sharif, Customs Danez Smith, Homie Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler Mai der Vang, Afterland Jenny Xie, The Rupture Tense Monica Youn, Blackacre  (reread) In progress : Daniel Borzutsky, The Performance of Becoming Human Dionne Brand, Nomenclature Alex Dimitrov, Together and by Ourselves Louise Gluck, Proofs and Theories Jorie Graham, Runaway Susan Howe, Quarry Carl Philips, Then the War: Selected Poems Lisa Robertson, Magenta Soul Whip Mai der Vang, Yellow Rain C.D. Wright, One Big Self

Time Is a Mother , Ocean Vuong Purgatory , Raul Zurita  And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase , Lynn Xu All the Flowers Kneeling , Paul Tran Plainwater , Anne Carson The Renunciations , Donika Kelly Some Say a Lark , Jennifer Chang The Master Letters , Lucie Brock-Broido Stay, Illusion , Lucie Brock-Broido Praise , Robert Hass Water Puppets , Quan Barry The Octopus Museum , Brenda Shaughnessy Versed , Rae Armantrout

Crystallography , Christian Bok Glass, Irony, and God , Anne Carson The Dolphin  and Day by Day  (selections), Robert Lowell Dolls , Claire Millikin Burying the Mountain , Shangyang Fang In the Language of My Captor , Shane McCrae frank: sonnets , Diane Seuss All the Flowers Kneeling , Paul Tran Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream , Juan Felipe Herrera Ajax , Sophocles Trojan Women , Euripides The Bacchae , Euripides (from 2021; listed now) Iphigenia in Aulis , Euripides (from 2021; listed now) Orestes , Euripides Alceste , Euripides Macbeth , Shakespeare Coriolanus , Shakespeare (from 2021; listed now) Pericles , Shakespeare (from 2021; listed now)

Dictee , Theresa Hak Kyung Cha God of Nothingness , Mark Wunderlich The Descend of Alette , Alice Notley alphabet , Inger Christensen Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts , Jorie Graham Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream , Juan Felipe Herrera  

A Distant Center , Ha Jin When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities , Chen Chen The World's Wife , Carol Ann Duffy Reconnaissance , Carl Phillips

A Treatise on Civil Power , Geoffrey Hill Little Pharma , Laura Kolbe Viva to those who have failed , Martin Espada Nobody , Alice Oswald Hybrida , Tina Chang Romey's Order , Atsuro Riley

DMZ Colony , Don Mee Choi Juvenilia , Ken Chen Not Here , Hieu Minh Nguyen How to Be Drawn , Terrance Hayes Mezzanine , Zoe Hitzig Thinking its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry , Dorothy Wang

Focal Point , Jenny Qi Anybody , Ari Banias 77 Dream Songs , John Berryman Goddess of Democracy , Henry Wei Leung Natural History , Dan Chiasson The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void , Jackie Wang The Lost Son  (excerpts), Theodore Roethke

After not having read it for years, I revisited Ode on a Grecian Urn  last night. My take on it below: Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,        Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express        A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape        Of deities or mortals, or of both,                In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?        What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?                What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of silence..." This time the strangeness of the first two lines struck me. No con...

The Renunciations: Poems , Donika Kelly Calling a Wolf a Wolf , Kaveh Akbar King Me , Roger Reeves  Erosion , Jorie Graham Living Quarters , Adrienne Su Incarnadine , Mary Szybist The Bad Wife Handbook , Rachel Zucker In progress Autobiography of Death , Kim Hyesoon Goest , Cole Swensen

Finished : Language as Bodily Practice in Early China , Jane Geaney (scholarly work) Postcolonial Love Poem , Natalie Diaz Into Each Room We Enter , Charif Shanahan Or to Begin Again , Ann Lauterbach  Eating in the Underworld , Rachel Zucker  Archaeophonics , Peter Gizzi Schizophrene , Bhanu Kapil  No Matter , Jana Prikryl 

Finished from earlier : Chord , Rick Barot  Finished : Life on Mars , Tracy Smith  The Triggering Town: Lectures , Richard Hugo Bright Dead Things , Ada Limon  Second Empire , Richie Hofmann  Toxicon and Arachne , Joyelle McSweeney  In progress : Into Each Room We Enter , Charif Shanahan

 Finished from earlier : The Beauty of the Husband , Anne Carson  When My Brother Was an Aztec , Natalie Diaz  Finished : Crow , Ted Hughes The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion , Kei Miller  Memorial , Alice Oswald  Voyage of the Sable Venus , Robin Coste Lewis  Second Empire , Richie Hofmann  On Tact, & the Made Up World , Michele Glazer In progress : Chord , Rick Barot Sight Map , Brian Teare Sleeping with the Dictionary , Harryette Mullen

  Finished from earlier : Sight Lines , Arthur Sze  Eye Level , Jenny Xie  Started and finished : Wodwo , Ted Hughes Tales from Ovid , Ted Hughes Weeds and Wild Flowers , Alice Oswald  Whereas , Layli Long Soldier  Black Movie , Danez Smith  Bestiary , Donika Kelly  In progress : Sweeney Astray  (selections), Seamus Heaney The New Black , Evie Shockley feeld , jos charles The Beauty of the Husband , Anne Carson When My Brother Was an Aztec , Natalie Diaz

Finished from earlier : Be Recorder , Carmen Gimenez Smith  Started and finished : Lyric Shame , Gillian White (literary criticism) Native Guard , Natasha Trethewey  Blackacre , Monica Youn  Dancing in Odessa , Ilya Kaminsky  In progress : Sight Lines , Arthur Sze Eye Level , Jenny Xie

Finished, from the summer :      Gregory Pardlo,  Digest        Vijay Seshadri,  3 Sections   Started and finished since then :      Sarah Howe, Loop of Jade      D.A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys      Myung Mi Kim, Commons      Alice Oswald, Dart      Alice Oswald, Falling Awake      Marilyn Chin, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow      Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard       Charles Wright, Caribou In progress :     Jorie Graham, Sea Change     Carmen Gimenez Smith, Be Recorder     Cathy Park Hong, Engine Empire     Christian Bok, Eunoia

In roughly the order I'd read them: René Girard,  Theatre of Envy Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous Jericho Brown,  The New Testament Jericho Brown,  The Tradition Forrest Gander, Be With Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein's Ladder Claudia Rankine, Citizen Peter Balakian, Ozone Journal Justin Wymer, Deed Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and Girl Sharif Solmaz, Look Louise Glück, The Wild Iris Also a list of books I haven't finished, roughly in the order I started them: Victoria Chang, Barbie Chang Helen Vendler, Last Looks, Last Books A.E. Stallings, Like Fred Moten, The Little Edges Gregory Pardlo, Digest Elizabeth Willis, Alive Vijay Seshadri, 3 Sections

Mozart's final (or second to last, depending on how you count it) opera is The Magic Flute , or Die Zauberflöte . It's a type of German light opera called singspiel that includes both spoken dialogue and musical numbers.  The segregation between "speech" and "singing" in singspiel has created a false sense that drama happens during the speeches, and static emotional expression happens in song. In reality, plenty happens during the music. Mozart is a master caricaturist, capable of representing any number of emotions in seamless rapidity. The Queen of the Night's first aria, "O zittre nicht," ranges from regality to piteousness, and ends with imperious bravura. Pamina's aria "Ah! ich fühl’s" delicately traces her emotional journey from grief to despair. But my favorite is the duet between Papageno and Papagena. Here, Mozart captures not only the characters' quicksilver joy, but even sketches out the arc of a happy marriage, mov...

I recently revisited Agatha Christie, rereading A Murder is Announced and reading, for the first time, Death on the Nile  and Five Little Pigs . Coming back to Christie made me think about the particular pleasure of her novels (and probably other whodunnits).

Così fan tutte  has always been the problem child of the Da Ponte operas. Critical favor has elided it in favor of  Figaro  and Giovanni , it's more illustrious siblings. This is partly because  Così 's  tone (or message -- or moral -- etc.) has been so difficult to pin down. This is a story of two young couples who have their sense of self and beliefs in love systematically dismantled. But the ending is happy, with all being forgiven and a double marriage!