'tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot'
i have a cold. i have that stitch you get in your side when you have a cold. i have a low persistent cough that doesn't hurt but it is damn annoying. and it is very hot outside, still, even at this hour. i watered the plants in our garden and the heat is heavy. we didn't do anything today on account of the heat and not feeling well. i read sven birkerts' most recent collection of essays changing the subject: art and attention in the internet age [graywolf, 2015]. birkerts' writings worry about digital culture vastly changing our reading/writing habits. how digital culture -- now the dominant culture -- rewires our neural circuits. i agree with birkerts. we are experiencing a vast and far ranging paradigm shift. i don't know what will happen in the near and far future. neither does birkerts; the essayist and lit. critic does not shy away from the internet. he is a prolific twitter user. but, the changes that digital life are making on and upon us are so great i fear we don't understand it. nor are we really talking about it. still, poetry is found in the pixels. birkerts recognizes that fact when he records his amazement when he learns that the poet seamus heaney, who was born in 1939, the year wb yeats died, thus preserving a kind of continuity in irish letters, had a cell phone and was a prolific texter. indeed, the last text heaney wrote was to his wife from his hospital bed just before the poet died. the text read, in latin, noli timere. be not afraid.
