kindly note
New additions to the must-read list: The Old Hag who says it better than most, the always amusing La MuseLivre, and the bitingly funny The Antic Muse. Also, Jessa is back.
New additions to the must-read list: The Old Hag who says it better than most, the always amusing La MuseLivre, and the bitingly funny The Antic Muse. Also, Jessa is back.
Though Britain has had a poet laureate for centuries, the United States has had one only since 1986, when legislators renamed the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. The Library itself now describes the poet laureate, perhaps alarmingly, as ‘the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.
I laughed out loud at “lightning rod” even if tears might have been more appropriate. Stephen Burt has a profile of poet laureate Louise Gluck in the Boston Globe.
Why can’t these authors write what they really think when they see the Booker shortlist? It would make a refreshing change to read an 800-word piece that just said: “Bastards! Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!” The most important thing for any writer is honesty, as I always say to Martin Amis when he rings me up for advice.
John O’Farrell on why it should have been him.
According to these breathless reports and baseless hysteria, some have convinced the American Library Association that under the bipartisan Patriot Act, the FBI is not fighting terrorism. Instead, agents are checking how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.
Now you may have thought with all this hysteria and hyperbole, something had to be wrong. Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading? No.
That’s Attorney-General John Ashcroft, defending his department’s ability to look at library records. Boy, that remark just makes me feel great. Especially when he uses the word “hysteria” in reference to people like the ALA. I mean, aren’t librarians just the kind of people that you think of when you think of hysteria and hyperbole?
Link via H20boro Lib blog.
The Guardian has the latest on Salam Pax’s blog experience and how he became the Baghdad-blogger-with-a-book-deal.
The latest issue of the Missouri Review came in the mail yesterday. It contains the winning story from their contest last year, “Custodian” by Daniel Coshnear. It also has a story by Steve Almond called “Wired for Life”. (By the way, Almond is guesting on Bookslut and he’s got a message for you if you write fiction from the neck up.)