For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Maureen N. McLane’s poem “Haptographic Interface” appears in the new Spring issue of the Review.

How did this poem start for you? Was it with an image, an idea, a phrase, or something else?  

This poem took wing, or distilled itself, during a conference on “Writing Practice” at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf in September 2022. I started writing while listening to the closing remarks. The scholar Andrew Bennett had given a talk on Keats vis-à-vis haptographics, a term I hadn’t heard before—that was one spur. Keats is someone I’ve read and thought about for a long time (in one wing of my life I work on Romantic-era poetry). Bennett had spoken about Keats’s handwriting—how moving it can be to encounter it—and his letters, and the matter of “literary remains.” Some months after the conference, I looked up haptographics—one of the first hits on Google tells you that “haptographic technology involves highly sensorized handheld tools”—is a pen such? Haptography is a technique for “capturing the feel of real objects”—is this what Keats was up to, capturing the feel of things (experiences, emotions, movements of thought)? I think so. Is this still poetry’s aim? These are questions the poem implicitly pursues, but I can only say that having written the poem. There was no thesis-in-advance.

As Liverpool found out, all the romantic farewell narrative in the world can’t stop a freshly tracksuit-bottomed Sean Dyche delivering a hammer blow to your title chances. And what a performance from that new lad, Daniel Calvert-Lewin!

Marcus and Luke give their takes on a dismal night for Liverpool which needed a calm slot into the bottom corner, but instead got Darwin Núñez desperately smashing the ball into Jordan Pickford’s meaty thighs. Elsewhere, Erik ten Hag serves up smiley faces covered in chocolate sauce (again), there's an unwelcome reminder of Paul Jewell’s jewel, and we have live reports from Pete Donaldson on Jason Tindall Watch at Selhurst Park. What more could you ask for!

We're back on stage! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Tickets go on sale on Friday at footballramblelive.com. You can get presale tickets from Thursday 25th at 10am by signing up to our mailing list here!

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This week, a new production of the composer John Adams’s oratorio El Niño opened at the Metropolitan Opera, where it will run until May 17. El Niño is Adams’ rewriting of the Nativity story, and his libretto—cowritten with stage director Peter Sellars, in one their many collaborations—draws on source texts as wide-ranging the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and Mexican poetry written in the sixties. The text of the libretto reminded me of an assemblage poem as much as an opera. I spoke to Adams, who has composed some of the most notable contemporary operas, among them Nixon in China, for our Art of The Libretto series. We talked over Zoom recently about the joys and pains of collaboration, learning and then setting Spanish text to music, his life as a Californian, and his attempt to write his own Messiah.

INTERVIEWER

How did El Niño begin for you?

JOHN ADAMS

“We’ve just beat Chelsea 5-0. Shall we take this upstairs?” Marcus, Luke, Pete and Vish react to a demolition job at the Emirates and some extremely intimate celebrations for the Arsenal fans.

Elsewhere, the Ramblers show their support for Gary Neville being taken to task, even if Nottingham Forest are still embarrassing. Speaking of which, Luke also gives his thoughts on Erik ten Hag’s latest press conference. Plus, Marcus prepares to honour Bruce Forsyth live at The London Palladium!

We're back on stage! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Tickets go on sale on Friday at footballramblelive.com. You can get presale tickets right now by signing up to our Patreon here or sign up to our mailing list here and get them straight in your inbox tomorrow!

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I ruined a dinner party ten years ago in Phoenix. Among the guests was a judge who said abortion was an issue that reasonable people could disagree on, and I opened my mouth.

At that time, Richard was teaching at the sprawling university in Tempe. We were at the home of two people we were lucky even talked to us. The woman in the couple was a brilliant sculptor. She built whole cities out of clay, where invisible inhabitants take refuge from the “everlasting no” I often represent. The man was a tenderhearted and sexy archaeologist, who was heading a big fat famous institute on human origins and the kind of primate behavior that accounts for actions like mine. He was, like me, a Jew from the East Coast, and he recognized in me a collegial form of urban unrefinement he liked.

Throwing a dinner party where strangers meet other strangers shares the same risks as social media; wolves and chickens may find themselves seated next to each other. Before the judge said the thing about abortion, I was having a great time talking to his wife, who led the education department of one of the local art museums. The drinks were good. The starters were good. These people knew how to lay a spread.

The hosts had come to our house a few months earlier, and I’d served meat loaf as the main course, and to this day Richard says the meat loaf killed that evening. Something was off in the chemistry of the group. We’d invited another couple we liked, and the couples knew each other. The thing that was off might have been in their history, some kind of disappointment or weariness, or a fleeting, weird energy.

From a Vietnamese 'office farm' to rammed-earth villas in the Costa Rican jungle

March 21 – April 20, 2024

March 9 – April 28, 2024