“What if we dislike or despise or hate poems because they are – every single one of them – failures? The poet and critic Allen Grossman tells a story (there are many versions of the story) that goes like this: you’re moved to write a poem because of some transcendent impulse to get beyond the human, the historical, the finite. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms. So the poem is always a record of failure.”
Category: words
If ‘Ulysses’ Were Published Today, What Would Folks Make Of It?
Charles McGrath: “By the standards of today’s dirty books, Ulysses seems pretty tame, and it’s hard to put yourself back in the mind-set of those who took such strenuous offense in the 20s.”
Rivka Galchen: “I can report that in my research I did not come across a single contemporary reviewer describing the book as obscene. Perhaps this accounts for why there aren’t really that many raves out there.”
Street Names – So Much More Than Labels For A Map
“Street names are the lyrics to accompany the symphonies that all cities perform, day-in day-out, and their integrity ought to be respected. Maybe they do have more of a function after all than to simply help people tell one street from another.”
Meet The New U.S. Poet Laureate, The First Hispanic In The Post
“As a child, Juan Felipe Herrera learned to love poetry by singing about the Mexican Revolution with his mother, a migrant farmworker in California. Inspired by her spirit, he has spent his life crossing borders, erasing boundaries and expanding the American chorus.”
A Poet Laureate Whose Work Is Meant To Be Said Out Loud
Dwight Garner: “[Juan Felipe Herrera’s appointment] makes you wish the job still entailed writing ceremonial verse, commissioned in bygone days for events like the openings of bridges or the deaths of fine old soldiers. Mr. Herrera is a poet you’d like to hear declaim from the National Mall.”
‘Bibliotherapy’ – Can Reading A Book Prescription Really Make You More Mentally Healthy?
Our correspondent relates a session with a bibliotherapist at Alain de Botton’s School of Life (it worked) – and explains that the practice (if not the term) is very old indeed.
Why We Need Our Writers To Be Audacious
“It is therefore necessary that writers everywhere should see it as their ultimate duty to preserve artfulness of language by couching audacious prose. Our prose should be the Noah’s ark that preserves language in a world that is being apocalyptically flooded with trite and weightless words.”
The Literary Crowdfunding Boom
“Authors, publishers and literary journals are all finding new ways of connecting directly to their readers – and their wallets – on online platforms such as Kickstarter. Marta Bausells examines the books industry’s new wave of social financing and picks 10 of the best literary crowdfunding projects.”
Muslim Fiction: Not Just For Fans Of Literary Realism Anymore
“Genre is ‘a way of exploring a rich religious tradition that looks beyond the mundane and tries to relate the spiritual to the mundane.'”
Closing A Tax Loophole For Amazon Accidentally Hits Self-Published Authors Hardest
“All fair and square? Not really. For microbusinesses faced with the job of calculating myriad tax rates, the new regime is an administrative nightmare.”