Word: importance
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most surprisingly absent from Opus Posthumous is the monumental and idiosyncratic "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." Stevens outlines his perfect poetics with instructions such as "it must be abstract," and then taunts us with glistening seascapes and fragrant, ripe fruits. The prime difficulty and import of Stevens' work lies here: his subject is at once immanent and idealized, both a radiant presence and a metaphysical abstraction. In a similar fashion, Stevens' best known shorter poems, among them "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and "Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself," concern themselves with the poet...
...least a rudimentary atom bomb. The inspectors believe they have dismantled the program, but some of its weapons components and equipment have never been recovered. The secret overseas purchasing operation Saddam set up before the war is still functioning, and it could be put to work to buy and import nuclear technology...
...Marley and Peter Tosh, partners in the group the Wailers and later solo superstars, were the imperial lions of reggae. Along with bandmate Bunny Wailer, they brought the music of Jamaica to a wider audience, establishing reggae as a genre of global reach and lasting import. Today you can hear their influence in the music of the hip-hop group the Fugees, the ska-rock band Sublime and even the Rolling Stones (Stones guitarist Keith Richards has a low-key Rastafarian drum-and-chant album out called Wingless Angels). Marley's career (he died in 1981) was rightly celebrated several...
...film Bean is exactly the wrong venue for Atkinson's character. Applying a simple-minded and contrived plot--or indeed applying any kind of plot of import, especially one with morals and attempted emotional baggage--just isn't the kind of load the framework of the character of Bean is supposed to support. It's like having an hour-and-a-half long "Seinfeld" episode about something and expecting viewers to care sincerely about the daily pitfalls of the characters--pitfalls which are so endearing because they are everyday and unimportant. Bean takes Atkinson's comic mastery and confines...
...inconsequential, episodic action; the audience can sit back and enjoy the mashugina machinations without bothering to worry about property damage or hurt feelings. There is a universally appealing joy in watching Atkinson interact, child-like, with the world around him and doing most of it destructively. Attaching import to his actions ruins...