Dan Chiasson @dchiasso Twitter profile

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 months

Onward

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

Sontag in @Newyorker after 9/11. The fearsome courage and clarity of this statement still amaze me.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

"Avoid metaphors, which can introduce unneeded baggage." --from UC Irvine's Inclusive Language Guide

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

On Emily Dickinson twitter we're going bonkers over the fly

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

Donald Barr, AG Barr's father, who hired Epstein to teach at Dalton at the age of 20 w/ no degree, also wrote a sci-fi novel about the pleasures of sex slavery.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Schiff's rhetorical strategy is to tell the story in all its sordid turns, building up to key gaps: "Would you like me to read that cable to you?" "I'd be happy to read that cable to you." "But the White House has NOT PROVIDED that cable." Then he says the word SUBPOENA

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 months

Books should have bloopers at the end

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

7 years

Good God.

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D

@RVAwonk

7 years

Seems Mr. Stone is under the impression that calling me a "stupid bitch" nullifies what I said. It actually just raises suspicion about him.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

(Morrison's Notes): "Would you like to see them? "I'd like to see them." "In any courtroom in the country you'd see them." "In a fair trial you'd see them." "They are there for the asking." He's astonishing.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

9 months

In Florida, a “state certified media specialist” will now certify which of Shakespeare’s novels can be taught

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

God please, I am begging--please God may I never again have a Tweet go viral

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

It's a brilliant rhetorical contrivance. He keeps building to these cliffhangers, then presenting the missing evidence as a coming-attraction, a tune-in-next-week with just one condition: "Subpoena."

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Here's one of the saddest things I've written. A letter from campus: via @NewYorker

The Coronavirus and the Ruptured Narrative of Campus Life

Colleges across the country are trying to figure out their way forward in a story in which meanings have suddenly, drastically, and frighteningly changed.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

11 months

A psychoanalyst writes from NYC to say he’d like to move to Burlington, but he’s concerned because he’s gay. Sanders sends this response

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Jason Overstreet

@JasonOverstreet

4 years

HOLY SHIT! Perhaps Schiff’s most powerful moment!

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

You’ll never believe what happened to this friend of mine

How Louise Glück, Nobel Laureate, Became Our Poet

For decades, she has taught us the contours of our own inner lives.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

It's utterly authentic, tragic righteousness. It has a range of bemusement or relish. But mainly it's argument conducted complexly in the pitch of--"Have you no sense of decency, Sir"--or Julianne Moore at the Pharmacy in Magnolia

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

I adore the cover of my new book. Thank you to the legendary design team at Knopf.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Weird, upsetting tone in the air, remember this, spread the word

Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

Sontag in @Newyorker after 9/11. The fearsome courage and clarity of this statement still amaze me.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

1 year

Oh wow

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

10 months

Writers should be nice to their elders

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

7 months

Wrote about Louise via @nybooks

Louise Glück (1943–2023) | Dan Chiasson

The news that Louise Glück had died reached me an hour or so after I learned, from others in her large circle of friends, that she’d been diagnosed just

www.nybooks.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

9 months

@mbsussman Or the films of Robert Browning???

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

The Wally Shawn piece in @nyrb is--astonishing--?!

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

@page88 is this where we're headed?

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

11 days

Word reached me in 1994 that Helen Vendler had called my home to admit me to grad school, and bonded w. my mom I was on a horrible weekend-long blind date in Sweet Briar, VA--endless, bleak I called Vendler back from the pay phone of a Bennigans, and the rest is, well, my life

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

I've been thinking about my unique contribution to @BernieSanders and I've decided on this--I'm going to try to reach Thomas Pynchon and get an endorsement. Contact me if you have leads. This is a real thing. #PynchonBernie

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

NPR just reported that Cheney took such a stand because of what she knows will come out--then used, as an example of what sort of thing might come out, Trump's GA call

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

I didn't know. Crushing.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

The ideal relationship of any writer to any subject matter is Emily Dickinson's to wildflowers. She'd imagined, sought, found, picked, dried, classified, sent and received as gifts, the real things, before she made them symbols of anything.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

In New England, waving to someone has always been meant as a way of reassuring them you have no intention of coming anywhere near them

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton NH “The immortal is scraped unconsenting from the mortal.”

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

My basic writing advice is: “get sad about it”

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 months

Does Maureen Dowd know what the word "crepuscular" means

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 months

Boo! (Happy bday John Keats)

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

Wilde to Whitman, 1888. "I must see you again--There is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love so much."

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

from an Amazon review:

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Hard to imagine an intenser pleasure than to have written a poem by Emily Dickinson. Almost two thousand times. Who would leave that pleasure behind, even for a day? Yet people still wonder how ED could have passed up pleasures every other human being settles for.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

Here’s what Don Jr. said at his mom’s funeral today:

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

Incredible @janaprikryl

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

This is the Vatican's nativity scene. Not making this up

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Frost’s birthday. Nobody likes him! He’s a convenient shorthand for lots of unappealing things. But: trust me

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

What a statement.

NBC News

@NBCNews

6 years

Philadelphia Mayor Kenney: "Donald Trump is meaningless to this whole process, he's meaningless to the city and the city's success. He tries at every chance he gets to tear cities down, and eventually he'll be gone."

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

I’d forgotten about this perfect, devastating Yeats poem

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Merrill. The greatest and saddest poem. #WorldAIDSDay2019

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Turning 50 is strange thing to happen to a little boy. That’s my great grandfather, who was born in the 19th century

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Just added this to the syllabus of my Emily Dickinson course: N.B. THIS COURSE WILL ACTIVELY MONITOR THE CHANGE OF SEASONS. WE WILL LOOK FOR SIGNS OF THE END OF WINTER, INCLUDING EMERGING FLOWERS AND RETURNING BIRDS.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

Good though to heed metaphor. Leave it to Frost to put it perfectly, even presciently, w/ his talk of safety "What I am pointing out is that unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere."

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

9 months

@ccxroads Tone is hard isn’t it

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Driving by a knitting store in the Boston burbs, I see a person knocking at the window; the door opens a hair, and bright balls of yarn change hands

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Yeats

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

That's it, I give up. (This is--so good--)

Sylvia Plath’s Last Plan

Whatever she set out to do, she did it.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

8 months

It seems safe now that the dum-dums have moved on to repost this of mine, from 2018, about Emily Wilson's engagement w/ the public on here--one of the most exciting uses of the platform ever

The Classics Scholar Redefining What Twitter Can Do

Emily Wilson’s tweets are quietly revolutionary, a new kind of experience for anyone who likes to watch knowledge take shape in an open format.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

WHHHHHAAAAAATTTTTT

KTVU

@KTVU

4 years

STOCKHOLM ( @AP ) -- The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to American poet Louise Gluck "for her unmistakable poetic voice."

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

We selected our three finalists by secret ballot, working from this longer list of our loves. I attach it in the interest of transparency, and to give these remarkable books an extra boost. Any one of them could have won the prize. Congratulations to all, and deep gratitude ❤️

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

The very long sentence is maybe my favorite art form, above even poems

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Back in the early days of the quarantine, I did something I'd never done before: I answered an ad in the New York Review of Books classifieds. Here's what happened next: via @nybooks

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

The more you read about Donald Barr, the more he seems like an utter loon--from the precise era and exact milieu in which a reputation for "eccentricity" in powerful white men could cover for Just About Anything...

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Professors with kids enter a sweet period of maybe ten years when the students are roughly their kids' ages, so they can share (awkwardly and w/ many gaps ofc) some of their students' cultural frameworks After that period closes, you become a Traveler from an antique land

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 months

Perfect Lake Champlain rocks

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

STATEMENT FROM ROBERT MUELLER: I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 months

David Ferry has died, at 99. David was among other things hilarious. I remember in 2012 he left a voicemail saying: “Dan, I have news to share. I died last week. Call me.” It was true.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

rereading Janet Malcolm's THE SILENT WOMAN: astounding, unrivaled, one of the best pieces ever published in @NewYorker

The Mystery of Sylvia Plath

From 1993: Janet Malcolm on the poet and her legacy, which raises difficult questions about literature, identity, and biography.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

wow

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

1 year

Commencement’23 @Wellesley !

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

1 year

I already teach an introductory class called 30 Poems. I can imagine a mid-level sequel called 15 Poems, and an upper level seminar called 5 Poems.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

What a book my god

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

What a cover folks ⁦ @nybooks ⁩

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

This email that I sent 16 years ago almost to the minute makes me realize that I am old now

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Avenue Victor Hugo books, reborn in a NH barn

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

11 days

My teacher 💔 via @BostonGlobe

Helen Vendler, a towering presence in poetry criticism, has died - The Boston Globe

“Helen understood that all poets needed what she did so they could take the next step,” said Jorie Graham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

My latest, on the great Wanda Coleman's selected poems edited by Terrance Hayes:

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

2 years

Written two weeks before he died--maybe his most beautiful poem "...they had changed their throats and had the throats of birds."

Rhys Tranter

@RhysTranter

2 years

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” — William Butler Yeats d. 28 January 1939

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

1 year

Have you ever been seated at an event next to someone famous, who seemed philosophically interested in the problem of why he was seated next to a complete nobody? As though causality itself needed to be questioned? RIP Martin Amis, I felt for you that evening

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

11 months

Unbearable to lose Saskia. One of the greatest writers I will ever know— The book of poems she will publish this fall is beautiful beyond description— Long ago we would drink G & T’s at the bar at Grafton St in Harvard Sq and gossip all about the silly grown ups ❤️

Graywolf Press

@GraywolfPress

11 months

We are very saddened at the loss of brilliant poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher Saskia Hamilton. (1/2)

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

More from me soon.

The New Yorker

@NewYorker

4 years

Louise Glück has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. "Her poems are flash bulletins from her inner life, a region that she examines unsparingly," @dchiasso wrote, in 2012.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

This is my favorite house in all of Vermont. It is, actually, a poem. I’ll tell you some stuff about it in a bit.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

"The history of taste is not the history of art" (Frank Bidart)

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Moon twitter: get ready tonight

The Washington Post

@washingtonpost

4 years

Tuesday’s pink moon is the biggest and brightest of the year

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

1 year

This project stank, even before it was clear why

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

"Writing in a time of pandemic"=WCW did 60 house calls/day in 1918

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 months

I remember when Louise won the Nobel, I asked her if that meant she could get in touch w/ Dylan now, and she said "that's SUCH a good idea"

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

James Tate's beautiful final book--assembled by Dara Wier, with a moving tribute from @matthewzapruder --is probably unique in recent poetry, finished a few days before his death. I wrote about it in this week's @NewYorker

The Last Poems of James Tate

In the course of his career, Tate mastered the art of absurdist endings. Then he faced the most surreal one of all: his own.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 months

What I’m best at is eggs benedict

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

A key image of this era. Will be in the American conscience for generations I think.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

One problem with insomnia is that 16 hours of consciousness is more than enough

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

Wellesley resident’s ‘Impeach Trump’ sign gets OK to stay - The Boston Globe

The town Thursday rescinded the violation notice it had sent regarding the banner, effectively saying Dan Chiasson could keep the sign.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Thayer St, Providence

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

6 years

Robert Lowell's grave, in the woods near Dunbarton, N.H. "The immortal is scraped unconsenting from the mortal." Scraped!! Man.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

9 months

Wallace Stevins is a lot like Dickinsen. A great craftsman of sentences and clever use of words but ultimately there is nothing there You close the book and none of it sticks with you. A ride at Disney land for people with masters degrees.

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

4 years

Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville captured on Google Streetview

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

5 years

With gratitude reaching far beyond this intentionally scanty list of named titles: my take on a great year in poetry

The Best Poetry of 2018

One of the oldest problems in poetry—how to render the hectic presence of the person in the static notation of the written word—has, in the Internet age, been rebooted.

www.newyorker.com

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Dan Chiasson

@dchiasso

3 years

Using a book light for the first time. It’s like having a small street lamp. The page becomes a bit noir

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Dan Chiasson