Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Critical thinking: A seminar in the comment section of the South Brunswick Post

It is rare that a lucid and well-structured debate happens in the comment section of any online story, let alone one as hard-edged as Keith Rasmussen’s over-the-top attack on Islam.

Mr. Rasmussen, who I have known for years, is a strong writer with a taste for hyperbole and has a talent for using words as figurative daggers.

His column, which we ran last week, was obviously an unacknowledged response to one I had written a week earlier, and it featured many of the attributes I mention above.

But, and this is key to me, it also offered a powerful example of argument gone awry. It was awash in the kind of logical fallacies that I try to teach my students to avoid. I offered a critique of some of the column in a post last week.

What I want to do now is direct readers to the comment section, in which Mr. Rasmussion and someone calling him/herself Zapped go at it. Zapped is pointed and calls Mr. Rasmussen out for his (deliberately?) faulty logic, for the straw men he props up to knock over and the way he elides the difference between the individual and the group so that he can argue that it was Islam that was responsible for 9/11 and not a small band of radical extremists.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Military media matters: Tom Dispatch explains

We live in a militarized society, which is nowhere more evident than in the way our media has been colonized by hawks. Tom Dispatch’s Tom Englehardt writes about it this week in a must-read (and you can hear him talk about it on the Tom Dispatch podcast). He explains it far better than I can.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Poets on a Wednesday night

It was a wonderful evening of poetry last night in Woodbridge, where I read as part of the long-running PoetsWednesday series.

Paul Sohar was my fellow feature — the second time we shared a bill — and he was funny, philosophical, wonderfully absurd and a perfect counterpart to my dark, concrete and politically focused poetry. I suggest everyone check his work out.

The open reading offered some good work, as well, including a performance of “Rock Candy Mountain” by Mark Brunetti. Brunetti will be featured Sunday along with Barbara Crooker at the River Read poetry series at the Dublin House in Red Bank at 2.

Thanks to Deb LaVeglia for her efforts — and her amazing antiwar poem. Keep up the good work.

***

The poetry series at the South Brunswick Library will return Sept. 19 with the Cool Women. The reading starts at 2 p.m. and is followed by an open reading. Susanna Rich and Carole Stone are on tap for Oct. 17.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Come see me read tonight

This post is just another in my recent string of self-promotional blurbs: I’m reading tonight with Paul Sohar at the Barron Art Center in Woodbridge at 8 p.m. as part of the long-running PoetsWednesday series. Joe Weil is doing a workshop before hand at 7.

Come out and enjoy the poems.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Dispatches: Showdown at the reform corral?

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not always criticizing the governor. Read this week’s Dispatches to see what I mean.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.