Sites and Stores

This site is a hoot. The writer, brimming with arrogance and an armful of caustic comments, seeks to "rehabilitate" well-known poems by pointing out what's wrong, and actually rewriting them. He's written over a 100 of these essays, showing that there's an endless supply of bad poems written by famous and established poets. His rewrites are rarely better than the originals, but sometimes his comments do hit the spot. Check out the essays on Sexton, Strand and Graham.

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I've been postponing trying to make an outline for the best dressed feature I'm supposed to write. It was easier 2 years ago when all I had to do was write snappy profiles of each of the 25 best dressed women, without having to tackle the idea of the best dressed list itself. While fiddling around, I chanced upon the blog of someone who writes about contemporary consumerism and capitalism. His entry on "best dressed idiocy" makes an excellent (if obvious) point that's never discussed in fashion magazines:

What's so infuriating about all this is how in these lists the stylishness allegedly evinced is supposed to come from innate personal qualities and smart fashion decisions within anyone's grasp, rather than being the product of an enormous industry apparatus coupling itself to the long-accrued prestige of the privileged classes....[These lists] encourage you to feel bad that you lack this natural grace, and urge to buy more crap to try to get it, a move which will inevitably fail, make you feel worse, and more vulnerable to the same pitch to buy more crap the next time. The point: "style" is never personal. It is always socially produced, and never within one's individual control.

Admittedly, these are probably not the best ideas to be absorbing while writing FOR the magazine which will pay me GOOD MONEY so that I can SURVIVE THE REST OF THE SUMMER since THE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT in which I teach DOES NOT LET PART-TIMERS TEACH AND EARN DURING THE SUMMER (end of rant).

And I am back to square one: how do I write this feature well without resorting to frivolity and rehashing style cliches?

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If you turn giddy in bookstores and love buying books at a bargain and live in the Quezon City area anyway, go to Bound. It's a small shop packed with jazz boooks, journalism books, children's books, and all sorts of literary fiction, mostly for bargain prices. Found the diary of Anais Nin 1944-1947 there for P100. Since people sell and donate their books all the time, there's no telling what you'll stumble upon when you do go. I'm really glad small bookstores like this exist. I hope it lasts.