Demonstrations in Frankfurt am Main in the next 24 hours:
- 15:00 - Demo: Rechte Verbindungen kappen! (https://demonstrations.org/en/events/63579--demo--rechte-verbindungen-kappen-)
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The of it
I think I’ve come up with the post title least likely to be clicked. Looks like a typo, doesn’t it? It’s not, I promise. We really are going to be discussing the of it.
What is the of it?
Or alternatively, what the heck are you talking about, Frank? Frightening though it may be, I tell you, the of it is real. Poets throughout the Anglosphere have been seduced by the of it, beginning, I believe, in the 1980s with the then Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. From there it grew and now hardly can one pick up a pamphlet of poetry without being brought face to face with the ubiquity Of It.
When Hughes stumbled upon the Of It, he perhaps appropriately used it to highlight that something was new. Or, really, and here we come to the problem of it, actually just to say that something was new, but in a slightly different way: ‘the new of it’. Now, saying something old in a new way is a completely valid poetry thing to do, as is its converse1. The problem of it is that ‘of it’ is no longer new. It has become that most dread of all poetry things: it is now only a poetry thing. No one describes things using ‘of it’ in the way poets do. All ‘of it’ does in a poem, in the form ‘the [adjective] of it’ is provide one more way of attaching an adjective to a noun. But it adds nothing to the description. ‘I stroked a smooth-furred cat’ is a normal, prosaic sentence. ‘I stroke a cat. The smooth of it.’ Is demented but it is also, by virtue of the ‘of it’ and the continuous present tense (the now of it?), poetry.
If I were forced, presumably by some People’s Commissar for Verse, to forbid one thing in poetry, that thing would be the use of poetry things. Like alabaster, which now means ‘a white thing’ — when was the last time you heard someone use alabaster to talk about actual alabaster? Or gossamer, what even is gossamer? ‘Omphalos’, likewise, was introduced to us by Seamus Heaney, an actual genius, and tediously repeated by dozens of poets in dozens of poems since, without adding a single thing to Heaney’s usage. No one says omphalos, alabaster or gossamer, except in poems, and always in the same way: the old in an old way.
These terms are not merely cliches; cliche has its uses and is anyway nearly impossible to avoid2. They’re signals that say ‘this is a poem’ and thereby absolve the writer of having to actually write something poetic.
Cultural stuff
Books
James Byrne, The Banality of Power
This is quite good but suffers when Byrne overthinks things. For example, in ‘A Flute for Boudicca’, he writes: ‘Here you / found me, hissing inside my own shade / like a tree that burns but will not burnish’. None of this convoluted simile makes any sense. I’ll allow that a burning tree may hiss, but does it do so in its own shade? Any which way, it is certain that we don’t expect trees to ‘burnish’, so highlighting that this one won’t tells us nothing. It’s clearly only there because of the similarity of the (etymologically unrelated) words, and the homophone with Byrne’s name. These layers don’t go anywhere.
Elsewhere, he riffs off of the Ocean Vuong snowlcone, ‘What is X but Y Z-ing?’ This has already been mocked enough (deservedly, in my view), but it’s representative of an approach to poetry where we’re sort of expected to make grand statements. I’m not really into it. In this case, Byrne asks ‘What is grief, if not stasis that keeps on / moving?’ Come on, mate. It’s not just that, is it? I was watching Star Trek yesterday and they had a more useful statement about grief than this. In the same poem, he talks of ‘a priest / swinging his chalice’. I could be wrong here, but doesn’t he mean a censer, the thing with incense in? That is definitely swung, unlike a chalice, which is the cup for communion wine. I don’t see that you’d swing this because, if you did, you’d make a mess. I’ve never been to Mass, so perhaps I’m wrong and priests do swing chalices.
Byrne definitely has some talent and much of the collection is good. Aside from the burn/ish thing, ‘A Flute for Boudicca’ is really good: ‘Welcome to Rome. / Here’s a ticket to the circus’ does everything Byrne intended. And more, for all I know.
Kim Deyn, Folkish
As various editors have told me with a mixture of admiration and exasperation, it’s pretty difficult to write funny poetry. Kim Deyn’s poetry is good, funny stuff. It’s de rigeur at this point in a review to add a phrase like ‘but moving’, as though being funny and being emotive are opposites. Not an error Deyn herself would make, I suspect. Key title: ‘The Wyrm Raises an Interesting Point’.
Billy Ramsell, Render
Ramsell writes an entire ‘selected poems’ for an imaginary Spanish poet Alberto Cenas. Inevitably, you’re reminded of the real Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and his ‘heteronyms’: many different assumed names, voices and characters. There’s a similar mood, here, too, of quiet despair in an indifferent world. However, where Pessoa despaired at an uncaring (acaring, might be better) universe, Cenas’ despair is with society rather than the world at large.
Ramsell positions himself as Cenas’ translator, rather than as creator. You can therefore have all the fun you wish thinking about the differences between the two processes. Borges would have a field day. To maintain the illusion, Ramsell gives us a timeline of Cenas’ life and work, and divides the book into sections based on the collections in which Cenas’ work ‘originally’ appeared. Ambitious, ingenious and completely committed to the fiction he conjures. An impossible role model for us lazy ironists (I, too, am completely committed to being lazy and ironic).
Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Life Without Free Will
A fascinating book which will shake even the most determined philosophical libertarian. Sapolsky repeatedly asks, in ironic tones, where the ‘free will neuron’ is in the brain; his argument would be stronger if he’d focused more explicitly on what he obviously believes: that such a thing not only doesn’t exist but cannot exist.
Because he sticks to his own field (neuroscience) and preoccupations (criminal justice), he occasionally leaves interesting threads like this dangling. He points out at one point that while free will is often seen as incompatible with determinism, it’s even less so with indeterminism. He doesn’t run with this idea, but it’s interesting! If you raise your hand now because you willed it, you have to believe that the will determined the outcome, but if you believe in indeterminism, you have to view it as a coicidence that your hand rose instead of falling, waving or indeed detaching from your wrist and striking out on its own. This suggests that the idea of free will involves a contradiction whether or not the universe is deterministic. Either: the universe is deterministic, in which case every decision you make is determined by prior physical events in a chain of cause and effect going back to the Big Bang, and there’s no way you can will your way out of it; or, the universe is indeterministic in which case, how can your will affect even your own body, never mind anything else around it? Either way, free will, against all experience, seems to be impossible.
But there’s the rub. I personally can’t quite get past the idea that free will exists because that experience is just so strong. More fundamental than that, though, is that I can’t understand why this should be the case. My body performs many actions, some completely involuntary (my digestive systems works without my direct input), some apparently partially under my control (I blink reflexively but also can do so at will), and some entirely optional (I don’t have to write this blog). Then there are marginal cases where I deliberately perform some action, say, playing the chord of E Minor on a guitar, in which I intend the outcome but don’t have to consicously will my middle and ring fingers on to the correct frets and strings. Why is it the case that I experience these degrees of consciously willed action, if not because some of them are consciously willed? Without getting too far into dualism, it seems to me quite easy to imagine a body-mind relationship where conscious thought played a slightly greater or slightly less role than it seems to. But in every healthy person it plays precisely the role it does in me. Why?
As I’ve previously made clear, I already believe that your free will is attenuated in important ways. The observational evidence is that other people believe this, too. Parents try very hard to give their children good life opportunities because they understand perfectly well that a kid who goes to a bad school in a dangerous neighbourhood is much less likely to successfully will themselves into a good life. In other words, most people’s preferences reveal that they’re some sort of compatibilist (i.e., believing something along the lines of ‘determinism is real but that doesn’t rule out free will’).
Sapolsky has certainly hardened my views about how much freely willed control we have over our lives (I’ve moved from ‘very little’ to ‘nearly none’). Once you taken into account all the things you didn’t choose (your parents and therefore your genes, the country, culture and time into which you were born, all the random events, over which you had no control, which did or didn’t happen to you3) and all the things you perhaps did choose but which nevertheless curtailed your future choices in important ways (which career path you chose from the options available; who you formed relationships with; what hobbies you have), there’s just not a lot of room left for free will, even if it can exist. And, again, people overwhelmingly understand this even if they say they don’t, which is why no one has ever said, ‘I might as well raise my kids in this flat between a brothel and a crack den, as that will save me money on rent and my kids will simply will themselves into success regardless’.
One underexplored area is what hard incompatibilism would mean for politics and society. From at least around the time of the Enlightenment, our politics has been defined by a belief in personal freedom. If freedom is (meta)physically impossible, that renders the basis of our society nonsensical. Granted, there is a perceptible difference between being metaphysically unfree and actually being restrained, but the inconsistency nevertheless bothers me. ‘Freedom, which is impossible, is the birthright of every human being’ is not a sound basis for politics.
Both Sapolsky and Hayek (who I read last week) hit on quite similar reasons for continuing to organise society on a roughly ‘free’ basis: the spontaneous organisation of large groups of organisms, including humans, produces extraordinary results, frequently ones that are not predictable at the outset. Allowing people this kind of spontaneous (even if unfree) organisation leads to superior outcomes than could ever be planned and a lack of free will doesn’t change that, any more than the lack of free will in slime moulds or bees (to use two of Sapolsky’s examples) makes their self-organisation less impressive.
Acknowledging that free will is less powerful than we believed should change our views on the nature of reward and punishment, but not on anyone’s capacity for creativity, compassion or any other virtue. Perhaps the ideal society is a Commonwealth of Knowledge, where ‘knowledge’ includes skill and talent.
Music
I found a load of CDs in the street so if I’ve picked even weirder stuff to listen to this week than is usually the case, thank the street CDs.
Anohni and the Johnsons, The Crying Light
N.E.R.D., Fly or Die
N.E.R.D., No_one Ever Really Dies
Lightning Bolt, Wonderful Rainbow
- Those are actually the only two poetry things you can do: old in a new way, new in an old way. Anything else is prose. ↩︎
- I’ve used at least two, depending on your level of generosity, so far in this blog: ‘stumbled upon’ and ‘brought face to face with’. ↩︎
- E.g., I didn’t choose to meet my future-wife at a party at university, in that I had no control in advance over whether ‘future wife’ would arrive at that particular event; it’s pure luck that no close member of my family died when I was a child, etc.. ↩︎
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Frankfurt Marathon 2026: Ergebnisse und Live-Tracking
Ergebnisse und Live-Tracking Frankfurt Marathon 2026: die 43. Auflage startet am Sonntag, 25. Oktober 2026. Das Männerfeld ist…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #biathlonlive #Germany #Hessen #livesport #résultatsbiathlon #résultatsendirect #résultatsski #résultatssportifs #skialpinrésultats
https://www.europesays.com/de/1360739/ -
frankenstein used to look like this
the 1910 monster has a very different silhouette. the library of congress kept him around.https://tacobout.online/2026/10/22/frankenstein-used-to-look-like-this/
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Frank Turek on Charlie Kirk a year after assassination: ‘The first person I think of when I wake up is Charlie’
Christian apologist Frank Turek thinks about Charlie Kirk every morning upon waking and every night before bed. One year after witnessing the conservative activist's assassination at Utah Valley University, the grief remains, but so has Turek’s determination to continue sharing the Gospel with college students.
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Flug nach Frankfurt: Gepäck von Bill und Tom Kaulitz blieb zurück
Auf Flug nach Frankfurt „So eine Frechheit“: Kaulitz-Brüder machen Ärger Luft 22.10.2026 – 18:28 UhrLesedauer: 2 Min. Bill…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #100137924 #100601380 #Airline #BillKaulitz #dass..? #Frechheit #Gepäck #Germany #Hessen #LosAngeles #Spotify #TomKaulitz #Tournee #Wetten
https://www.europesays.com/de/1360216/ -
Oper Frankfurt: Loebe und Guggeis verlängern bis 2032
Frankfurt am Main/Berlin (MH) – Intendant Bernd Loebe und Generalmusikdirektor Thomas Guggeis bleiben der Oper Frankfurt vier weitere…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Germany #Hessen
https://www.europesays.com/de/1359951/ -
Studienfahrt der VHS nach Frankfurt ins Städel zur Ausstellung „Maria Magdalena Sin.Pray.Love“
© symbolbild Gesellschaftvor 1 Stunde VOGELSBERGKREIS/FRANKFURT (ol). Die Volkshochschule des Vogelsbergkreises bietet am Samstag, den 7. November, eine Studienfahrt…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Germany #Hessen
https://www.europesays.com/de/1359950/ -
Demonstrations in Frankfurt am Main in the next 24 hours:
- 19:00 - Die AfD gewinnt in Sachsen-Anhalt. Demokratie in Gefahr? (https://demonstrations.org/en/events/63729--die-afd-gewinnt-in-sachsen-anhalt--demokratie-in-gefahr-) -
Offenbach: Sattelzug schiebt fünf Fahrzeuge zusammen – acht Verletzte
Unfall bei Frankfurt Sattelzug schiebt fünf Fahrzeuge ineinander – acht Verletzte 22.10.2026 – 02:07…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #100137924 #100151112 #100601380 #Auto #Blaulicht #Bundesstraße #Einsatzfahrzeug #Fahrzeug #Germany #Hessen #LandkreisOffenbach #Massenunfall #Polizei #Sattelzug #Verkehr
https://www.europesays.com/de/1359209/ -
Koscherer Supermarkt in Frankfurt wurde eröffnet
Hinter manch banal wirkendem Einkauf steckt eine große Geschichte: Im relativ neu eröffneten »Shuk Market« in Frankfurt steht…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Berichte #Blogs #Germany #Hessen #Israel #JüdischeAllgemeine #JüdischesLeben #Kommentare #Kultur #Politik #Religion #Wochenzeitung
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358962/ -
Von Belmondo bis zum europäischen Jazz
Eschborn (ew) – Das Eschborn K bietet in den kommenden Tagen erneut ein vielseitiges Programm. Am Freitag, 23.…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Germany #Hessen
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358960/ -
Frank Fischer #Fb ·
Eine der größten Verschwörungen in der Geschichte der Menschheit. Und niemand spricht darüber.
Damit ist jetzt Schluss. Denn es werden tatsächlich keine neuen Friedhöfe gebaut, obwohl immer wieder Menschen sterben. Wohin kommen die alle?
Und es hört nicht bei den Friedhöfen auf. Nach langer Recherche steht nun fest, dass auch so gut wie keine neuen Autobahnen gebaut werden...#verschwörung #verschwörungstheorie #friedhof #satire #witzig
Video #reel https://www.facebook.com/reel/1880978389997652/?__cft__[0]=AZiZv-Vt7o7uAVh8Lfga9EH1A0CuboJODT1dpprQUVJ3Lij2h8YwpX3NJp4zeMGGMLTcVFZplbi0cA-Wdefriq7IDhc6KRfhn-2nGSy2EWj9aLuQknudO-wBB_JEu9-Hp4P8YnV472NJs-DAcQDGC64uxPc5jTjpegTsR480SxXKXMp4TirGialAhHdZgxZ9b353qQz25g&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R
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Frankfurt: Vater gibt Tochter ein „High Five“ – 1.000 Euro Strafe folgt
Verstoß gegen Kontaktverbot Vater gibt Tochter ein „High Five“ – 1.000 Euro Strafe Aktualisiert am 21.10.2026 – 10:45…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #100137924 #100601380 #Abklatsch #Auto #Gerichtsurteil #Germany #Hessen #Justizbehörde #Kontaktverbot #Prozesstermin #Urteilsverkündung
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358709/ -
Journal Frankfurt News – Städel Museum kooperiert mit DM
Mehrere Frauen befinden sich im Wasser, ihre Körper sind in unterschiedlichen Haltungen zu sehen. In Maurice Denis’ Gemälde…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Germany #Hessen
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358707/ -
A Java Geek Weekly 159
8 #Programming Concepts That Look Useless Until Something Breaks. #Yandex outage. What I Self-Host, What I Don’t, and Why. #Grafana Tempo 3.1. Variance in Generics, Phantom and Existential types with #Java and #Scala. Adding features to the #ClaudeCode harness. HACS is moving to #HomeAssistant as Marketplace. The Golden Path to Become an Agentic Enterprise. How I Scaled #Agents Beyond My Home Server.
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Frank Johnston: Lyrical Landscapes and Decorative Style 🖼️🇨🇦
Frank (Franz) Johnston was an original member of the Group of Seven, though his association was relatively brief, as he left in 1921. His early work with the Group featured lyrical depictions of the Algoma region, often characterized by a decorative quality and bright palette. 🇨🇦 #Canada #FrankJohnston #GroupOfSeven #CanadianPainter
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/franz-johnston
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Frank Reich Under Fire as Jets Turn Toward Miami
Today’s Jets News is focused on an offense that continues to leave too much on the field. Frank…
#NFL #NewYorkJets #NewYork #NY #Jets #Football
https://www.rawchili.com/nfl/1033354/ -
Wildunfall im Taunus bei Frankfurt: Wildschweine lösen Unfallserie aus
Schwerer Wildunfall im Taunus Sechs tote Tiere, vier Schrottwagen – Chaos auf Bundesst…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #100137924 #100601380 #Autounfall #BadHomburg #Bundesstraße #Fahrzeug #Germany #Hessen #Polizei #Saalburg #Schrottwagen #Taunus #Unfallserie #Wildschwein #Wildschweinrotte #Wildunfall
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358480/ -
FES startet Zufriedenheitsbefragung über Besuch auf dem Wertstoffhof
(Symbolbild: Pixabay) Wie war der letzte Besuch auf dem Wertstoffhof? Konnte alles abgegeben werden,…
#Frankfurt #FrankfurtamMain #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Germany #Hessen
https://www.europesays.com/de/1358478/ -
Eintracht Frankfurt will von "Gladbach 2.0" nichts wissen
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Wir suchen eine Sachgebietsleitung Monographien (print & elektronisch) (m/w/d)
📅 Start: 01.01.2027 | 💼 A 11 HBesG / E 11 TV-G-U
Im Fokus steht die aktive Mitgestaltung der Medienbearbeitung von morgen: von der Weiterentwicklung der Erwerbung sowie Katalogisierung gedruckter Monographien & E-Books bis hin zur Digitalisierung und Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen.
👉 Alle Infos zum Stellenangebot sowie zur Bewerbung: https://karriere.uni-frankfurt.de/gu-frankfurt/job/58422
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Jets’ Frank Reich knows he has to get ball to Garrett Wilson ‘more’
Frank Reich can’t hear the screams from the nosebleeds and the bars and the living rooms. But the…
#NFL #NewYorkJets #NewYork #NY #Jets #Football #FrankReich #GarrettWilson #Sports
https://www.rawchili.com/nfl/1034615/ -
🇩🇪 Frankfurt zieht Bilanz: Fünf Jahre Istanbul-Konvention und Maßnahmen gegen Gewalt an Frauen
Die Stadt Frankfurt hat nach fünf Jahren Umsetzung der Istanbul-Konvention eine positive Zwischenbilanz gezogen und neue Maßnahmen zum Schutz von Frauen vor Gewalt vorgestellt. Die Stadt Frankfurt hat am Mittwoch eine erste Zwischenbilanz…
#Hessen #Frankfurt #Gewaltprävention #IstanbulKonvention #Nachrichten #InfoGrat
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Donavon Frankenreiter suma presentación en Santiago | #Rockaxis
🔗 https://www.rockaxis.com/rock/noticia/52370/donavon-frankenreiter-suma-presentacion-en-santiago/
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stars return to frank lloyd wright’s only built planetarium after 20 years
a dome full of stars returns to florida southern college Two rings of curved red seating surround…
#NewsBeep #News #Artsanddesign #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #CA #Canada #Design #domes #Entertainment #FrankLloydWright #renovationandrestorationarchitectureanddesign #schoolarchitectureanddesign
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/944195/ -
#job in #Frankfurt am Main
Techniker:in Starkregenfrühwarnsystem (w/m/d) - Stadt Frankfurt am Main
#FediHire
https://www.greenjobs.de/a100155535 -
Über Hamlet und Frankenstein | Theatertalk – Theater Münster
Talksendung vom Theater Münster – produziert beim medienforum münster e.V. Beim „Theatertalk„, der Sendung von und mit dem…
#Muenster #Deutschland #Deutsch #DE #Schlagzeilen #Headlines #Nachrichten #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Münster #Choreografie #Germany #Kultur #Literatur #Nordrhein-Westfalen #Tanz #Theater
https://www.europesays.com/de/1361686/ -
Black and White Photography - "Frank Tischer" | Featured Artist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLRZSyQ5dIo
#foto #photography #blackandwhitephotography #schwarzweissfotografie #youTube
