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DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE MADNESS: ROUND ONE
We attribute to every sporting contest a rivalry which may, or may not, exist. We think we see love. Which may not exist. Most opponents are paired up by chance. The rivalry isn’t real. In an...
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THE MADNESS EXPLODES: ROUND ONE
We love it—who doesn’t?—when a few words express a great deal. Who has time for novels? Let’s extract wisdom from words in a minute, and live. In Scarriet March Madness Round One in the Song...
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MADNESS GLAM IN THE FIRST ROUND!
David Bowie (real name Jones) went on to be a world famous superstar of glam rock—but Marc Bolan (of the band T. Rex), who was killed at 29 in a driving accident, his wife at the wheel (her name was...
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ROUND ONE IN POETRY: KEATS VERSUS BYRON
Byron It is fitting somehow, that Lord Bryon faces off against Keats in Scarriet’s Poetry Madness—these are the two greatest poets, in English, perhaps, and their vast differences bespeak of Man’s two...
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WHERE IS THE MADNESS OF YESTERDAY?
Another first round battle in the Song Bracket features a fated match. Paul versus Paul. “Yesterday” versus “Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?” As the poet Shelley said, “our sweetest songs are those...
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IF YOU VISIT ME
If you visit me, I will kiss you with music and compliments; Not real kisses, for those belong To her, nor can I give you actual song, For I am no Mozart mathematician, Or his modern variation,...
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ELLIOTT SMITH AND FRANK SINATRA BATTLE IN SONG ROUND ONE
Who could be more different—different people, different music, different eras, different sensibilities: Frank Sinatra and Elliott Smith? A world war two era mensch against a grunge era diffident. And...
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T.S ELIOT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT—POETRY ROUND ONE IN THE MADNESS
We know there’s something magical about Scarriet March Madness tournaments—the pairings so often feature uncanny resemblances without any conscious intent by those putting together the brackets. Look...
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LEONARD COHEN AND THE ROLLING STONES: MORE MADNESS 2017
These two acts, Leonard Cohen and the Stones, facing off in a Round One contest in the Song bracket, represent that era in popular Western music when singers with poor singing voices became immensely...
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AMAZING GRACE VERSUS I’M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY
The song “Amazing Grace,” perhaps the most popular spiritual in the West, makes its song-like point explicitly—“how sweet the sound which saved a wretch like me.” It is the song itself, the very sound...
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FINAL ROUND ONE BATTLE IN SONG BRACKET
Sad to think we have already come to the end of the 2017 Scarriet March Madness first round in the Song bracket with this contest. How fleeting life is! “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a...
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POE VERSUS TRUMP: PROSE— ROUND ONE—MADNESS
This contest should evoke much amazement and laughter, as it pits the greatest writer to ever perform in English—Edgar Allan Poe—against Donald Trump, in Scarriet’s 8th annual March Madness...
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FEBRUARY POEMS BY BEN MAZER, REVIEWED
As the shadows lengthen on American poetry in the 21st century, one is naturally prepared to think there was a noisy, sunny noon of poetry with noisy, popular poets. But there never was such a thing....
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PROSE ROUND ONE MADNESS: NABOKOV, MARTIN LUTHER KING, LOLITA VS. I HAVE A DREAM
JFK, Lincoln, Lennon, MLK, all murdered in America, suddenly, in a public manner. Reagan, almost killed in the same way. Poe, most likely assassinated, too, found on the streets in Baltimore, where...
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THE MADNESS CONTINUES! AUDEN BATTLES WELBY!
Here’s another classic poetry battle between the 19th and 20th centuries in the Poetry Bracket, Round One: W.H. Auden, the well-connected, gay, British poet, became American in 1940. T.S. Eliot, who...
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WHEN YOU EXPRESS YOURSELF LIKE THIS
When you express yourself like this, What can you say to me? I guess all I can do is kiss You and hug you and let you sleep. Everyone reads your poetry. Looks at your paintings divine. You make men...
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FILM, ROUND ONE, MADNESS 2017
The film bracket consists of famous one-liners heard from the movies. Memorable poetry was murdered by Modernism in the early 20th century; but it remained alive in America in popular song and popular...
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ROUND ONE POETRY MADNESS CONTINUES—DICKINSON VS. READ
Who has heard of the poet Thomas Buchanan Read? None, is our guess. Poe called Read “the echo of an echo,” a “copyist of Longfellow.” “His sin is imitativeness.” We love this line, however: As if the...
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POETRY BRACKET ROUND ONE: FANNY OSGOOD VERSUS JOHN DONNE!
Fanny Osgood There were many exquisite women poets in the 19th century, but since “modern” means more than “women” in poetry, very few of them are read anymore. Dickinson, really. And that’s it. In...
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MORE MADNESS PLAY IN THE POETRY BRACKET: ROETHKE’S FOE 19TH CENTURY POET...
The poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) The American poet, Cornelius Mathews, has made his way into the Scarriet 2017 March Madness Tournament (immortalizing him forever) by way of a notice by Edgar...
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