Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021544, Sat, 16 Apr 2011 10:54:57 -0300

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[NABOKOV-L] Looking for a 1959 edition (on line) of New Wye
journalistic samples...
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Two more ancient VN disparate sightings (were they not related to photography or to light, with a pinch of Nabokov)...
There are rather amusing touches to be read in poet Billy Collins' review. I wonder how a New Wye journalistic cyber-edition would read today: the type and content of its headlines, its betweenlines, Prof. Hurley's articles, snipets of John Shade's poems, Nabokov's "The Snapshot," or an annoucement of Prof. Pnin reading a selection of Pushkin in John Shade Hall on his 85th birthday...

The Official Newspaper of Chautauqua Institution, Established 1876.
July 30, 2010: Collins draws parallels between photography, poetry

"Billy Collins cast an ekphrastic gaze on his own photography and poetry as well as that of others Friday, closing Week Five's morning lecture series on photography in a flourish worthy of the former poet laureate of the land....Much to the delight of the crowd, he read some poems that, while they involved images in his mind's eye, proved utterly unrelated to photography...Anthony Bannon, Ron and Donna Fielding Director of the George Eastman House, interviewed Collins before the poet's reading....Collins credited George Eastman and his Brownie cameras with "democratizing" photography. Just as people "think that anyone can pick up a pen and write a poem - or think they can," folks also imagine themselves photographers. Photography...appeals to the "hurry sickness" prevalent in society, while poems "are really about the romance of time - time is running out."... He called poetry "held stillness" and said, "One of the powers of photography is silence . whereas poetry wants to talk... Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century French poet, critic and translator, had voiced fear that photography would replace painting, debasing art with mechanism in the way of the era's industrialization. On the other hand, Walt Whitman, "wanted to photograph America in words," Collins said...He also read Vladimir Nabokov's "The Snapshot," which explores the "accidental spy" who shows up in a family's vacation photo, and Sharon Olds' "I Go Back to May 1937" before reading his own "Look at the Birdie."..Collins joked that pictures of himself taken in his childhood capture an "expression . of bewilderment and mild dismay" as he looked into the "empty, bird-less air" after his father would say the outmoded expression before he would snap a photo. The poem begins, "It is almost enough to inspire me/ to take a snapshot of something around here/ first thing in the morning,/ maybe the little bakery down the street/ where I often go for coffee and a muffin/ and the big city paper/ and the French girls behind the counter." The snickering audience liked that final image of the girls. "


Attracted to Light : Doug Starn and Mike Starn
Editorial Reviews :"Perhaps Nabokov prefigured Attracted to Light in his fictional four-volume set called The Butterflies and Moths of the Russian Empire in Father's Butterflies: "The illustrations are still more perfect-the downy, velvety texture, the blurry translucence of various families of moths are rendered so delicately you would be afraid to run your finger across the paper...." A sumptuously oversized and exquisitely produced book, Attracted to Light showcases the Starns' extensive conceptual portrait series of the nocturnal moths' mysterious journey and the seeming gravitational force that light has over them, "captured" in photographs and filmic video footage. "
Amazon.com: Attracted to Light (9781576871898):

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