Are my interests broad or narrow? Ron Silliman's blog is almost exclusiveley devoted to defining and documenting a particular tradition of American poetry, in generous detail. So far, in this blog, I have spoken mostly about contemporary American poetry, jazz, translation, Spanish poetry, and academic literary criticism. A narrow range of topics, to be sure.

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When looking at a website of "great buildings" I was trying to remember the name of an architect who built several homes in Berkeley at the turn of the century. I knew it started with May... Maybeck. I remember driving around with my parents to look at Maybeck houses, and of course, the Christian Science Church. I hadn't thought of Maybeck in years.

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When I last flew, I looked at one of those "sky mall" catalogues. What was striking about these overpriced luxury items was how few of them (almost none) were visually elegant or sleekly designed. Most were pure Kitsch, in fact.