“A good poem is like the space shuttle. It enters the reader’s mind and heart like a rocket. On leaving the atmosphere, it drops the launching gear of experience that served as impetus for its creation.”
“Short quiz to determine whether or not you are a confessional poet:
1. Are you Robert Lowell?
2. Do you feel, like Whitman, that you are a part of the world?
3. Do you feel that your circumstances, sufferings or joys make you distinct, separate, unusual?
4. Do you dislike the poetry of Robert Lowell?
5. Are you an American?”
Which books did you skip reading but wrote a paper on or talked about at the book group anyway? (via Arts and Letters)
“Kay Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, said writers were 10 to 20 times as likely as other people to suffer manic-depressive or depressive illnesses, which lead to suicide more often than any other mental disorders do.”
But good news! (sort of..)
And this, which I promise has the power to make you happy: the first podcast by the Striking Viking Story Pirates, who adapt stories by very young authors for the stage. This is an interview by the puppet Rolo with an author after his story has been performed. Let us all wish to be stuck inside a computer.