Uncategorized Archive
Literary Boroughs #12: Verona, New Jersey
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The
Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents The Everyday Muse
When I was nine my grandparents gave me a copy of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, and I fell in love so completely with poetry, I told everyone that when I grew up I was going to be a rich and famous poet. Then in the seventh grade
Narcopolis
Narcopolis Jeet Thayil Penguin Press, April 2012 304 pages $25.95 It’s dangerous to look for the reincarnation of a classic novel in contemporary literature. Like a monk seeking the next in the line of a particular lama, I placed the various relics of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano before
Dear Dr. Poetry
An Individual History Michael Collier W. W. Norton & Co., July 2012 80 pages $25.95 Dear Dr. Poetry, My father died when I was very young and I don’t remember him much. My mom told me that he died doing what he loved—rescuing children from burning buildings. But I
One More Swing of the Club
When I sat down to write this piece—my last post for Ploughshares—I knew I wanted to bookend my stint as guest-blogger with another yoga/writing essay. I wanted to talk about writerly humility; specifically, how I’ve come to a better understanding of humility through Child’s pose. I figured I’d describe
I Know How it Ends
In 1988, the only thing that was happening in my life was A.A. and people with AIDS. I was living with an architect in a loft in Brooklyn that had once been a picture frame factory still trying to figure out what to write now that I was coming
Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents Liz Kay & Jen Lambert, founding editors of burntdistrict & Spark Wheel Press
When Versedaily posted Benjamin Sutton’s, “three poems from Refutations by Memory,” originally published at burntdistrict, founding editors Jen Lambert and Liz Kay saw a marketing opportunity— one that also created conversation around Sutton’s poems— and offered a lottery for a free subscription to anyone who posted a comment about
Literary Boroughs #11: Washington, D.C.
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The
Four New Messages
Four New Messages Joshua Cohen Graywolf Press, August 2012 208 Pages $14.00 One may as well begin, before getting to the ignoble task of judgment, with the facts: Four New Messages is a collection of stories by Joshua Cohen, who, according to his biography near the book’s back cover,
The Center for Fiction: “Away from the Rum Shop and Billiard Room”
June 21, 2012, New York City. I’ve just spent the afternoon in meetings at the Grove/Atlantic offices near Union Square. Now I’m trying to hail a cab—no way am I riding the subway in this heat—to take me to The Center for Fiction, where Harper Perennial’s Cal Morgan and