in the news

well now that the last two weeks we as a nation have spent discussing immigration reform has proved to be a complete waste of time, maybe we can get back to the unfinished business of this president's failed iraq war in which "thousands" of mistakes ("figuratively" of course) were made and yet no one has been held accountable for, the illegal domestic wiretapping program which he continues to defend unapologetically and, this just in, his role in (or at the very least approval of) leaking classified information to the press in an attempt to cover his ass and blameshift.

not that immigration reform is not an important and complicated issue that deserves attention, but i'm always amazed at how the news media (bloggers included) is so easily distracted. when congressional republicans clearly wanted to see some new headlines and so suddenly the legislative agenda becomes one of immigration reform: congress says jump, news media asks how high.

meanwhile in poetry, charles bernstein reports that today is the publication date for the louis zukofsky selected that he edited for the library of america's "american poets project" series. (is it actually available? NB: according to rod, yes!) if yr unfamiliar this is a pretty cool series, compact little hardcover books with dustjackets edited by people who know the work. i've been tempted for example to pick up the amy lowell, yvor winters and stephen fearing editions since there are no other editions of their work currently available. (there's a nice muriel rukeyser too but i have her random house collected already.)

i'm eager to see what charles selected. it's a tough job since LZ's work is so diverse and sprawling. what do you select from "A" for example? seems to me ron silliman had a discussion about this on his blog a while back, lemme see... ok yes he's made two passes at this, a first that ended up being 427 pages and a second that tries to do it in 150 pages. these guys clearly know the work better than i do but we could make it a head-to-head competition that could be interesting, CB's LZ vs. RS's LZ.