Tyler Malone

Writer: @LATimes @PoetryFound @Cineaste_Mag @LaphamsQuart @EbertVoices @Artforum @ArtinAmerica @LitHub & novel in progress // Professor

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

I wrote a behemoth on Frost for @PoetryFound:

"He understands as much the mud-soft spaces in the human heart, wet at the firm touch of a workman’s boot, as he does the impenetrable darkness that sits between the stars and mocks people like a mongrel maw."
https://t.co/zyBgnCERnP

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

"A BODY IS NOT AN IDENTITY"

I wrote about Body Horror for Lit Hub: https://t.co/U4ZYCtc3ru

[Literary Hub @lithub]

What does horror need? According to @ThePhthailer, it’s humor: “Laughing villains act as tricksters and jesters who mock us by holding a mirror up to society.”
https://t.co/bl5Sqdgo44

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

I wrote about horror and humor for @lithub, continuing my Halloween horror essays for the 9th year in a row.

"When we laugh, the body admits what the brain cannot."

https://t.co/16yR7uEdSl

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

I wrote about Megalopolis as World War III's Showgirls: https://t.co/uvRpJ7GKJ5

[Literary Hub @lithub]

.@ThePhthailer on why Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a new generation’s Showgirls.
https://t.co/olI94FCcZt

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

I wrote about Megalopolis as World War III's Showgirls: https://t.co/uvRpJ7GKJ5

[Poetry Foundation @PoetryFound]

"For a poem about the brevity of every state of being, the single octave perfectly enacts its themes through its form."

—Tyler Malone in our new poem guide, "Felix Culpa-bility: Robert Frost’s 'Nothing Gold Can Stay'" https://t.co/dSJTnGm8YR

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@bernardtjoy The Selected Letters of John Keats

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound Never said that. But whatever, man. Adios.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound Ultimately, you can think whatever you want about Mending Wall, but I think the poem pretty clearly doesn't side with either detachable statement when given a close reading. And if you can't get that from the poem itself, Frost certainly felt that way about his own poem.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound Did you just read that short section or the whole essay? The essay isn't solely about Mending Wall. That's a small part of a much larger whole, so I couldn't spend thousands of words on one poem, when the focus is his poetic interest in form, negative capability, and misreading.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound I discuss the poem in the essay I linked. It's a long essay, so no pressure to read obviously, but if you just want to read about "Mending Wall," the poem is explored mostly in section VII (titled "Beware of Detachable Statements"). https://t.co/zyBgnCERnP

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound Frost in letters, conversations, lectures, and diaries discusses how everyone misreads the poem by assuming he sides with one or the other statement. He says in one letter, "I played exactly fair in it." A close read of the poem makes this clear.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@titusfilm @stetson_thacker @PoetryFound A classic misread

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@stetson_thacker @titusfilm @PoetryFound In some ways, Frost was one of more modernist modernists, even though he's usually relegated to being categorized as a traditionalist and nostalgist. Anyway, here's the essay, if you're interested: https://t.co/zyBgnCERnP

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@stetson_thacker @titusfilm @PoetryFound A famous example would be the oft-quoted "Mending Wall." Politicians love to use the "Good fences make good neighbors" or "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." But Frost does not side with either of those positions.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@brianeha @matthewspecktor @hedgehogreview That Kenner opening contains my favorite simile, too: "He liked James, he wondered at James, as at a narwhal disporting." He's up there w/ Joyce & Melville as the best creators of surprising/beautiful similes. Insane feat for a guy who never wrote a novel or collection of poems.

[Tyler Malone @ThePhthailer]

@brianeha @matthewspecktor @hedgehogreview Kenner's opening to The Pound Era is probably the best thing ever written in a book of criticism. I opened my piece on the Kenner-Davenport Correspondence with that line: https://t.co/sD3z1t8wXV