November 2012
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Poets respond to the Israel-Gaza conflict
Marcela Sulak and Tala Abu Rahmeh called on poets to respond to the Israeli and Gaza conflict(s) through letters and poetry in a collaborative project called “The Gaza Poetry Roundtable.” Much of the media reduces the Gaza-Israel situation to numbers: rockets…
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Today In Loss of Innocence
I saw Hanson twice in the ’90s and each time it epitomized joyful innocence. Which led me to wonder how only six years later, here I was, nodding out with a needle in my purse as the band covered “Optimistic”…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Bruce Lee’s Advice to Poets
Who isn’t a devotee of advice from writers about writing? One of my favorite books in this guilty-pleasure genre to come out lately is Dennis O’Driscoll’s collection of witticisms and one-liners, Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry.…
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“Boundless optimism and boundless cynicism”
“To me at least there was a sense that the Post is a dying art form. It’s a paper already nostalgic for itself: The headlines, the blotter, all touch back to the days when Hearst and Pulitzer duked it out…
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The Plight of the Anglocentric Dictionary
Beware–your Oxford English Dictionary is missing thousands of words! It has been revealed that former OED editor, the late Robert Burchfield secretly deleted thousands of words that he deemed too “foreign” and placed the blame on other editors. Allison Flood…
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Home Sweet Omaha
Nebraska: golden Midwestern land of corn, cows, and…call centers? Kathleen Massara writes for n+1 about growing up in Omaha. Massara’s Nebraska has a lot more frustrating cubicle jobs than, say, Willa Cather’s, but then again, maybe they aren’t so different…
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The Rumpus Interview with Kitzia Esteva
A champion for immigrant rights, Kitzia Esteva talks about the fear and empowerment she embraced while on the UndocuBus, her work as a community organizer, and what Obama’s immigration policies mean to her.
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A Soundtrack for Writing
What music do you write to? GalleyCat has accumulated a decent-sized list of songs that are guaranteed to churn out inspiration.
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Protecting Possum Man’s Hard Drive
What do you do with a loved one’s letters, photos, and journals when they pass away? What about their emails, online accounts, and computer files? In an essay at Locus Online, Cory Doctorow describes his efforts to preserve the digital…
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“Waxwings” by Daniel Nathan Terry
Daniel Nathan Terry’s second collection of verse, Waxwings, opens with “Scarecrow,” an address to the poem’s namesake from its creator: “Scare-crow crafter, burlap-tailor, / black-eye smudger, when I’m done, / crows mistake you for a man.” By the end of…
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The Next Letter for Kids: Lisa Yee
The next Letter for Kids, going out this Friday, is from Lisa Yee. Lisa’s debut novel, Millicent Min, Girl Genius, won the prestigious Sid Fleischman Humor Award. Her other novels for young people include Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, So Totally Emily Ebers,…
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SELF-MADE MAN #18: In Real Life
I used to believe that collapsing the Venn diagram-space between the public and private self was the best way to ensure authenticity.