Ben Friedlander

he/him/his | Jewish anti-Zionist | "Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it" (Emily Dickinson) | Views my own

[Seagull Books سیگل @seagullbooks]

Rest in Peace dear friend. Alexander Kluge. In his study October 2025. Munich.

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

A lot of bizarre foreign policy decisions can be explained by people not understanding the relationship between cause and effect.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@tanjil_rashid_ @BorisDralyuk @george_szirtes Alexander Kluge fits the bill. Jürgen Habermas too?

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@nikhil_palsingh “I had a lot of dean-level conversations”

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

Last pair of leather boots lasted 25 years with resoling. Just bought a new pair. That should take me to the collapse of this reality.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@outsidadgitator That’s how I think of it too, but then there are poems that don’t exactly fit as praise or affirmation, like Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy.” I always accept the designation but feel funny saying it, like ordering food in a French restaurant knowing my pronunciation is awful.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@outsidadgitator And with regard to genre, this one by her is pertinent

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@outsidadgitator Ode is a category I’ve never understood (Robert Hass calls it a mode, like satire, rather than genre), but anyway Julia de Burgos wrote quite a bit that I think fits, like this one for Grito de Lares.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@outsidadgitator Robert M Young had a foot in both worlds but don’t know if he tried to reconcile them.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@bdjansenphd @nrduford When I arrived at UMO many books still had pockets and check-out cards. You could see who checked them out and also their ID numbers…which were (I kid you not) social security numbers.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@bdjansenphd It’s idiotic we don’t have a digital subscription but we do have those early issues in microform. Admittedly, crowdsourcing is faster.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@arm_hist @peligrietzer I had that same difference between MA and PhD. The difference was revelatory.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@christianbok Tetrameter

[Dan Chiasson @dchiasso]

BERNIE FOR BURLINGTON: The Rise of the People's Politician (Knopf, 2/03/26), with an astonishing cover by Alison Bechdel

[Alec Karakatsanis @equalityAlec]

THREAD. Today's article by New York Times reporter Devlin Barrett is a good example of how bad journalism can normalize authoritarianism. Let's look at a particularly egregious example.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@peligrietzer Ployes (gah, autocorrect)

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@peligrietzer Here in French-speaking Maine we have played. https://t.co/VLgANASl0S

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@AdamsOrArdor I edit Paideuma, which used to be the journal of Ezra Pound scholarship. We still receive several submissions a year on The Cantos, but nearly all of them are on Pound and China and most come from overseas.

[Ben Friedlander @mongibeddu]

@outsidadgitator I went that route around a year ago and only lurk for the sake of a few accounts, yours among them. Oh well!

[Out-Spoken Press @Outspoken_Press]

Alice Oswald being arrested yesterday for supporting Palestine Action