R.D. Pohl

Rachelle Toarmino and the 21st Century Lyric - The Buffalo-based poet’s new collection launches tonight at BICA Earlier this year Buffalo-based poet Rachelle Toarmino published a chapbook of experimental lyric poetry titled My Science. It was the ...

Rachelle Toarmino and the 21st Century Lyric: The Buffalo-based poet’s new collection launches tonight at BICA.

thebuffalohive.com/rachelle-toa...

@nicksturm.bsky.social
I happened to be on the board of directors of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo at that time. We were pulled into the fray, lost our NEA funding for the first time.

Thinking back to the first wave of the culture wars from the late 1980's and 1990's--in particular, the NEA Four (Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes), Mapplethorpe, Serrano, et al)--I think control of Congress more likely correlates with NEA funding patterns over time.

Adjusted for inflation, NEA funding was highest--$1.8 billion--over the four years of the first Reagan administration & has remained stagnate--about $750 million per presidential term--for the last 25 years.

Much of Nobel Prize in Literature recipient László Krasznahorkai's work is available in English translation from New Directions Press. George Szirtes won the Best Translated Book Award (2013) for his translation of Satantango (published in 1985, in Hungarian) published by New Directions.

“If you have a question about the universe, you always have a few possibilities—in particular through language. The power of the word is, for me, the only way to get closer to this hidden reality.”

We’ve unlocked our Art of Fiction interview with László Krasznahorkai.
buff.ly/5rxtimk

Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (week of Oct. 6 to Oct. 11) - Five events this week in the Buffalo literary community, including the Barrio Poetry Slam at Shea’s 710 Theatre, and the Book Launch Party and Community Science Fair in celebration of […]

5 events this week in the Buffalo literary community including the Barrio Poetry Slam at Shea’s 710 Theatre, & a Book Launch Party & Community Science Fair in celebration of Rachelle Toarmino’s second full-length collection of poems HELL YEAH (Third Man Books).

thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-area...

The Richard Condon plot of the novel was significantly reworked by Demme.

You should to watch the movie at some point. The 1962 original by John Frankenheimer is best . Sinatra and Angela Lansbury were great in it. Never saw the 2004 Jonathan Demme remake with Meryl Streep. Demme reset it from the Cold War/McCarthy era to a sort of a post Gulf War, post 9/11 world...

I was thinking about Walter Benjamin while reading this, but to your final point here: When the boundary between creator and creation dissolves, doesn't that put the the creator at risk for becoming a "brand"? I don't think *contemporary* poets are at great risk for this, but visual artists are.

Laura Kerr: "A growing strand of contemporary practice, both in art and in poetry, has undergone a fundamental transformation in how it exists and persists. The traditional model of creation → completion has, in many cases, given way to something more fluid, recursive, and continuous."

Laura Kerr : The Enduring Idea: Art and Poetry in the Age of Endless Circulation A growing strand of contemporary practice, both in art and in poetry, has undergone a fundamental transformation in how it exists ...

newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Laura Kerr : The Enduring Idea: Art and Poetry in the Age of Endless Circulation
periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/10/laur...

Thanks for posting. This is a shorter piece than I expected, but spot on in what it describes.

The CDC says people must consult a health professional before COVID shot The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accepted a controversial recommendation from outside vaccine advisers to tighten guidelines for the COVID vaccine.

www.npr.org/2025/10/06/n...

The new guidelines were just published by the CDC today, Jessica. On Friday, I got my COVID and flu shots here at Wegmans in less than 5 minutes. RSV shots are only for seniors over 75 in NYS. So you may have gotten yours just under the wire.

and as you know, I'm from Buffalo, where football is our civic religion and emotional regulator.

Or their political party...

For heaven's sake, Jessica. I'm probably your dad's age or close to it, but i can't imagine someone saying that to their daughter. Also, Alabama won that game by 16 points. I realize it was it was tied at halftime, so I don't think anyone should tie their identity so closely to their football team.

Media trust hits new low across the political spectrum Only 28% of Americans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media.

www.axios.com/2025/10/02/m...

Journalism as a profession is in crisis, because there no longer is a social contract based on trust between the public and the media.

Public trust in the media in general has hit a new low across the political spectrum, with only 8% of Republicans and 27% of Independents reporting that they placed a"great deal or a fair amount of trust" in the mass media.

Buffalo News announces change in print frequency starting Nov. 3 Starting the week of Nov. 3, The News will produce a printed paper six days a week, from Tuesday through Sunday. We will continue to produce an E-edition seven days a week and post the latest news, sp...

The Buffalo News moves to six days a week hard-copy publication, Tuesdays to Sundays, starting November 3rd.

ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team Documents show that ICE plans to hire dozens of contractors to scan X, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to target people for deportation.

United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages to target people for deportation.

Trump Advisor Says ICE Agents Will Be at Super Bowl for Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show: ‘It’s So Shameful They Picked Someone Who Seems to Hate America’ Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski warns that ICE agents will be at the Super Bowl, where Bad Bunny is set as Halftime Show performer.

These days we have to be prepared for anything. The limits of our incredulity are being tested. So sure, maybe ICE Agents will interrupt Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and drag away and arrest half the participants. That seems entirely aligned with the Zeitgeist.

Is that a trait you developed while living here in Buffalo? 😂

Bob Creeley's LOVE. — alina Ştefănescu The first week they wrote a letter. He wrote it. She thought about it. Peace was in the house like a broken staircase. — Robert Creeley, “The Interview” What is the point. That is what must be...

A notebook dump on the decade of poems collected in Robert Creeley's LOVE. Plus heroes, the hero, Wallace Stevens, and the dialectical urges of the cento.

www.alinastefanescuwriter.com/blog/2025/9/...

"Thiel is easily the most well-known Girardian on the planet. He does not, however, speak for the vast majority of mimetic theorists—particularly the European contingent. Certainly, none of the Girardians I spoke with seemed remotely interested in constructing katechons."

"One critic even speculated that Thiel saw Facebook as 'a mechanism for the containment and channeling of mimetic violence.' "

For anyone here who may have attended Rene Girard's lectures on Mimetic Theory at the University at Buffalo in the late 1970's or read his book Violence and the Sacred, this piece should be of great interest to you.

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Carl Schmitt, the German legal theorist tapped by the Nazi's to justify Germany's slip from democracy to dictatorship.

Those theories have been a roadmap for the billionaire
ever since.