"I like to think of you reading my verses (though it took you five years to find them out). When I wrote them I was a strange lonely boy, walking about by myself at night and thinking that some day a girl would love me. But I never could speak to the girls I used to meet at houses. Their false manners checked me at once. Then you came to me. You were not in a sense the girl for whom I had dreamed and written the verses you find now so enchanting. She was perhaps (as I saw her in my imagination) a girl fashioned into a curious grave beauty by the culture of generations before her, the woman for whom I wrote poems like ‘Gentle lady’ or ‘Thou leanest to the shell of night.' But then I saw that the beauty of your soul outshone that of my verses. There was something in you higher than anything I had put into them. And for this reason the book of verses is for you. It holds the desire of my youth and you, darling, were the fulfilment of that desire." READ MORE

We are a society of listers. Grocery lists, to-do lists, bestsellers lists, the “25 Random Things About Me” meme on Facebook that generated almost 5 million notes in one week. Mainstream magazines feature them, entire websites are devoted to them. Even museums have begun celebrating them: the Smithsonian organized an exhibition two years ago titled, simply, “Lists,” which featured examples of the form by the likes of H.L. Mencken and Picasso. (The latter’s handwritten 1912 list recommended artists for inclusion in the first-ever Armory Show.) The year before that, the Louvre invited Italian writer Umberto Eco to curate an exhibition and event series based on a theme of his choosing. His idea? “The Infinity of Lists.” READ MORE

As an Amazon affiliate, we get a wee percentage of sales from people who click through from our site to Amazon. But better than that, we get a report from Amazon about what people have purchased! (Don't worry, it's all anonymous: there's no information at all passed on about the purchaser's identity.) One thing we can guarantee: you people buy things online. Here are just a few excerpts from the year 2011, here with quantity, title, media and cost. READ MORE

"Snitching for pay has become especially popular since the world’s economic troubles slowed South Korea’s powerful economy. Paparazzi say most of their ranks are people who have lost their jobs in the downturn and are drawn by media reports of fellow Koreans making tens of thousands of dollars a year reporting crimes." READ MORE

Mary HK Choi: Hi Seth! How are you feeling today? READ MORE

Whenever I belatedly discover an American master, I feel a pain inside. A guilty pain. A pain related to an understanding that the celebrity-media complex has indeed been "winning." And then I put on some sunglasses and remind myself: It's not personal, babe. It's just late capitalism doing what late capitalism does. (Then I flip myself off in the mirror.) READ MORE

Holy moses, here is an amazingly comprehensive list of, pretty much, all the moving-image culture you missed in 2010 and shouldn't have, according to many people! Still, the one cultural event we can agree upon with Josh Siegel, associate film curator at MoMA? Sky Mall Kitties! Miss you, Sky Mall Kitties.

I would up being pretty busy at work this last month, or I would have written a full-length Difficult Listening Hour about the current production of Leonard Bernstein's opera A Quiet Place—a work that is at times brilliant, and is still sort of dizzyingly entrancing even when it is busy being uneven. The story might make you go "blah," as it's a jaundiced tale of suburbia's morally cramped way—a Revolutionary Road/"Mad Men" arc perceived through the late-alcoholic haze of some gnarly-proof, atonal music that's speckled with odd bitters of jazz. But do not let your standard-issue requirements for novelty turn you away, here. There is not a better way to spend $12 (standing room) or $25 (fourth ring) in NYC this Sunday at 1:30 pm. READ MORE

"On Sunday, November 14, 2010, The Boston Globe will publish a special magazine devoted to the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts' major new expansion, the Art of the Americas Wing. Entitled, "The MFA takes wing," the 56-page full-color glossy magazine will appear in all editions of the Boston Sunday Globe as well as in The New York Times in greater Boston and Manhattan..... Other features include stories on how the museum beefed up its collections, the story of two rooms from a 19th century Dorchester house that were recreated for the museum, and what's served in the new café." Is it... soup? Do they serve soup?