By way of continued labor, poets attempt to craft language that can carry their ideas beyond the passing moment, reframing their experiments as steps toward the ultimate realization of their aesthetic visions. The poet’s will toward synthesis of voice and form is about having something vital to say and knowing time is always running out. – The Atlantic
Category: words
How Words Change Their Meaning
Language is a system. Sounds, words and grammar do not exist in isolation: each of these three levels of language constitutes a system in itself. And, extraordinarily, these systems change as systems. If one change threatens disruption, another change compensates, so that the new system, though different from the old, is still an efficient, expressive and useful whole. – Aeon
What We Learned Having AI Analyze A Book
Using AI tools to analyze this piece of literature shed new light on key elements of emotion and memory in the book – but they did not replace the skills of an expert or scholar at interpreting texts or pictures. As a result of our experiment, we think that AI and other computational methods present an interesting opportunity with the potential for more quantifiable, reproducible and maybe objective research in the humanities. – The Conversation
Tiny Books Are Another Symptom Of The Great Twee-ification Of American Culture
Katy Waldman (using the Dutch name under which tiny books have become popular in Europe): “A dwarsligger‘s teeniness is inseparable from its tweeness. But dwarsliggers embody twee in another respect: as displays of individualism, idiosyncrasy, quirkiness.” (Nevertheless, she kind of likes them.) — The New Yorker
American Poetry Is Political Again. The U.S. Poet Laureate Looks At How And Why
Tracy K. Smith: “Political poetry … has done much more than vent. It has become a means of owning up to the complexity of our problems, of accepting the likelihood that even we the righteous might be implicated by or complicit in some facet of the very wrongs we decry.” — The New York Times
Does Becoming A More Expert Reader Increase Pleasure Of Reading?
Does one kind of literature afford a more refined pleasure than another kind? Can we compare the pleasure induced by Virginia Woolf with, say, that induced by Agatha Christie? Is “Casey at the Bat” potentially less (more) enjoyable than Keats’s “Ode to Autumn”? Is the pleasure of reading Henry James similar to that of reading George Eliot? At what point does a story’s eloquence or lack of it begin to affect people in the same way? – American Scholar
Bestselling British Author Says He Wants To ‘Safeguard’ Libraries
Even as hundreds of libraries have closed and thousands of professional library staff been laid off, there are still libraries in Britain left to safeguard. And comedian turned bestselling children’s author David Walliams wants to save them. – The Guardian (UK)
If The World Is On Fire, Is It OK To Talk About Books?
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, has some questions – and some answers. “No one I know is unaware that this is a particularly weird time to make art, rather than to spend every moment calling your senators. But art has always had to exist alongside history.” – Electric Literature
Some Essential Reading, According To Actor John Leguizamo
The actor found out his son was getting bullied at school about their heritage – so he created a stand-up show, got it on Netflix, and is now promoting some top-quality books about Latinx history so other kids don’t have to experience the same thing. Here’s his holiday shortlist of books (that, yeah, Americans should already have read). – The Atlantic
The Poet Who Wants Americans To Have A Personal Reckoning
Natasha Trethewey has been the U.S. poet laureate, is a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and has a new collection out, and it requests from, and gives back, much to its readers. “Trethewey writes into the sprawling and untold stories in America’s history, giving voice to the forgotten, or the memories at risk of being forgotten.” – BuzzFeed