Laura Lippman on ModPo 2023
Laura Lippman writes a substack series under the title “Shaved Meats, Piled High.” Her November 7, 2023, essay is about ModPo. Click HERE to read the whole piece. Below are the first few paragraphs:
My Google newsfeed often fills me with shame. Who is this shallow person who has a more-than-passing interest in “Real” Housewives? What is all this clickbait from “Eat This, Not That,” when I gave up dieting five years ago? Why am I still being shown stories about retail bankruptcies; I stopped researching that book in early 2022!
On the flip side, I do want to know about all things Stephen Sondheim and Steely Dan, travel and books, Southwest Airlines and unruly passengers. Yes, please show me cool tables for small entryways and tell me all your decluttering “secrets.” I am what I Google — and I Google a lot of poetry. Sure, it’s in part because I am sometimes looking for a cool line or two to post with the sunrise photo I share (almost) daily to social media. But I genuinely love poetry. Some of my favorite people are poets!
My poetry Googling habits might be why Google sent me a Philadelphia magazine article in May ‘23 about a course called Contemporary Modern Poetry, aka ModPo. (“Please never say that again,” said an otherwise supportive friend.) The course is free via Coursera, an app I already had on my phone because I attempted to take the famous Yale University course on the science of happiness early in the pandemic. I promptly registered for the fall course.1 Then I promptly forgot all about it until I received an email reminder in mid-August that class was about to start.
