What to Read When: You Like to Look at Birds
I have long gravitated toward books that know where they are situated.
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Join NOW!I have long gravitated toward books that know where they are situated.
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreAmanda Moore discusses her debut poetry collection, REQUEENING.
...moreAria Aber discusses her debut poetry collection, HARD DAMAGE.
...moreBut the evasion is purposeful, and the purpose is to marvelous effect.
...moreBiespiel offers a number of best practices—not just for writing poems, but for living a creative life.
...more“My novel tries to write the contributions of men and women of color back in.”
...moreThe speaker in Hard Damage, it seems, is writing herself to life.
...moreJennifer Martelli discusses her new collection of poetry, MY TARANTELLA.
...more2018 began interlaced with a double helix of joy and fear.
...morePeter Mishler discusses his debut collection, Fludde, the effect of ritual on poems, and childhood psychology.
...moreAlicia Mountain discusses her debut collection, High Ground Coward, the surveillance state, and queer representation in the poetry world.
...moreThis lesson feels especially relevant to our moment: that it’s possible to be both a frustrated activist and also a present and joyful human being.
...moreJesse Ball discusses his new novel, Census, the inherent sinister nature of institutions, and creating imaginary authors.
...more[W]e wanted something different from each other’s bodies than what was actually there, which might be why our bodies sometimes came together.
...moreSigrid Nunez discusses her seventh novel, The Friend, her fondness for writing about animals, and the ways the literary world has changed.
...morePoet Stephen Mills discusses his first two collections, He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices and A History of the Unmarried, teaching writing, and what’s next.
...moreWith impermanence and “praise for the devil” all around, it’s a gift to rediscover joy, no matter how fleeting.
...moreAfter my mom hangs herself, I become Nancy Drew. I am looking for clues, for evidence. Answers.
...moreGayle Brandeis discusses her memoir, The Art of Misdiagnosis, out today from Beacon Press.
...moreShame is a treble hook that tells me that 1) I not only fail but am a failure, that 2) I not only damage people but I am damaged, and that 3) I not only lie but I am a lie.
...moreMelissa Febos discusses Abandon Me, confessional writing, Billie Holiday, reenacting trauma, cataloguing narratives, and searching for identity.
...moreAcclaimed Spanish novelist Gonzalo Torné discusses his first novel to be translated into English, Divorce Is in the Air, his ideal reader, and the economic crisis in Spain.
...moreConnie Wanek discusses her latest book, Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, the challenge of looking back at older poems, and what prioritizing writing looks like.
...morePoet Ange Mlinko responds to a challenge from FSG’s Works in Progress series, to “tackle a question—or invent a new one—that lies within [Rilke’s] Letters to a Young Poet.” Mlinko muses on poets and places: do writers of beautiful lines need to be in beautiful places? Her answer, not surprisingly, pivots on the power of language.
...moreWhat scares me in the current work is how much I trust the concept, what I’m trying to achieve.
...moreBe it Latin or poetry, or whatever it was—I was feeling woozy by then. If I couldn’t love what I was reading, I took it, it was better to have never read at all.
...moreAmending Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Andrew Solomon offered advice to young writers at this year’s Whiting Writers’ Awards. An adaptation of the speech appears in the New Yorker.
...moreDean Rader talks with Edward Hirsch about his new book Gabriel, the pain of losing a child, and the challenges of writing grief.
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