August 28, 2012
Short Takes: Dickinson in the Digital Age
“Mad people = people who stand alone + burn,” wrote Susan Sontag in her journals. “I’m attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.” Read some […]
August 27, 2012
The Two Gandhis
Takes on Mahatma Gandhi tend to focus either on the Mahatma or on the Gandhi: That is, they either consider him a holy man whose politics emerged from an inner “truth” […]
August 23, 2012
Mix Tape: Literary Crimes
Andrew Scott responds to the “ladder-climbing” and “posturing” behind nasty reviews and other writer-on-writer crimes. When an English professor wrote to Flannery O’Connor and asked her to explain one of […]
August 9, 2012
Mix Tape: Cover Me
Is social media turning readers into yes-men/women? If you follow “the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you’ll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing […]
August 2, 2012
Mix Tape: Poetry Gold (and Silver…and Bronze)
Has poetry changed the world? Has increasing literacy been at all responsible for decreasing brutality—and, if so, “what attributes of literature can explain this? Three come immediately to mind: its […]
July 26, 2012
Mix Tape: From the Mouths of Babes…and Speakers Sewn into Lace
A six-year-old girl looks at classic book covers and guesses what the books are about. “It’s about the desert. It’s a mystery about the desert. You know, I think it’s […]
July 18, 2012
Mix Tape: Tacos, Tears, and the State of American Poetry
A Bukowski-Sondheim musical? Though the combination sounds questionable, so does the Taco Bell taco in a Doritos shell…and apparently that’s selling pretty well. Abby Mims went into an MFA program […]
July 12, 2012
Mix Tape: The One
The 3:AM website disappeared last week. Its servers were managed by a company whose website was down and whose owner could not be located—until people used social media to track […]
July 5, 2012
Mix Tape: “Be relentless. All over the world, people are working harder than you.”
Thanks to Sarah Manguso, for this and other advice to young writers, including this bit on socializing: “Don’t go to events; go to the receptions after the events. If possible, […]
June 28, 2012
Mix Tape: Weapon of Mass Instruction
“The Book That Can’t Wait” demands your immediate attention—not necessarily because of its content but because it was printed using disappearing ink. Wait…what was that book again? The one with […]
June 21, 2012
Mix Tape: Rainbows Have Seams
Do you like words? Do you like “suave V words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve”? Do you like “crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty”? Why Crayon […]
June 14, 2012
Mix Tape: Judge a Book
What are the top ten poetry presses based on their book covers? These small presses are big on design. Seventeen-year-old Sarah Turbin’s paperback cover design for John Green’s 2006 Printz Honor title, […]