35 Variations on a Theme from Shakespeare. Via Lined and Unlined, where you’ll find several cool pointers about the Oulipo literary group.
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Category Archives: Writing
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
An interesting bit from a David Foster Wallace reading circa Infinite Jest:
I would go to halfway houses and just sit there. I lurked a lot. Nice thing about halfway houses is they are real run-down and real sloppy and you can just sit around. And the more you sit around looking uncomfortable and out of [...]
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
The last bit from a 1993 interview with David Foster Wallace [pdf] in Whiskey Island Magazine, some advice for young writers:
This is a long haul. Writing is a long haul. I’m hoping that none of the stuff that I’ve done so far is anywhere close to the best stuff I can do. Let’s hope we’re [...]
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
The fifth issue of Ahhhhh Mega-Zine is ready for your enjoyment. I really liked Javan Makhmali’s photos in this one.
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
I wish I could find online Gerald Early’s essay, “Dancing in the Dark: Race, Sex, The South, and Exploitative Cinema”. It was far and away the best thing I read in Best African American Essays: 2009, but it looks like it’s hidden away in Issue 57 of the Oxford American, subscribers only.
In any case, Early [...]
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
From an interview with Jimmy Carter:
Q: You’ve written memoirs, a historical novel, a children’s book, poetry—all while running the Carter Center. How many cups of coffee do you drink a day?
A: Well, I get up early. (Laughs.) I’m a farmer, still. I get up around 5 o’clock in the morning when I’m home, so I [...]
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Thursday, January 1, 2009
Good news: back in October I wrote up my notes from Umberto Eco’s lecture on “How I Write”. That one and his other 3 Ellmann Lectures are now available on iTunesU.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Is it Art?, an essay on videogames.
A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough. A persuasive recent essay by the games theorist Steven Poole made the strong argument that the [...]
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to’another due,
Labor to’admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is [...]
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Turtle, by Kay Ryan:
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to [...]
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
“How did you become a poet?”
“Reluctantly.”
Charlie Rose interviews U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and James Billington of the Librarian of Congress:
If I’ve written this written this properly, it’s like condensed soup… it should be reconstitutable in the mind of the reader and it should come out just about right if you’ve had a chance to [...]
≡Umberto Eco on “How I Write”
Sunday, October 5, 2008
This year, Emory University’s Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature are delivered by Umberto Eco. I didn’t know much about him before, but he kind of blew my mind. This afternoon I stopped by to hear him talk about “How I Write”. I was *really* impressed with how much he plans out his worlds beforehand, even [...]
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, via Austin Kleon. That stuff is so good. I remember a couple years ago, at a thrift store, I saw a copy of Poetry Under Oath: From the Testimony of William Jefferson Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky. I wish I’d bought it. This review of Poetry Under Oath has [...]
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Poetry 180 is Billy Collins’ poem-a-day selections for high schoolers. It starts off with his poem, Introduction to Poetry.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
≡Pocket Poem
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I’d opened it a thousand times
to see if what I’d written here was right,
it’s all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want [...]
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Friday, August 15, 2008
Is it harder to write a sonnet than a great hip-hop verse?
The literal rules for writing sonnets, tankas, haikus etc. aren’t particularly hard to follow. It’s following the rules and actually saying something that’s hard. You can write a sonnet that makes no sense, and has no real power in the words. Likewise, you [...]
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Something to shoot for:
What is the function of a critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:
1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read [...]
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Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Hamlet, the Facebook News Feed Edition. My favorite part: “Hamlet became a fan of daggers.” [via funkaoshi]
≡The Collapse of This City’s Community
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Did this one on the train from work—warming up for the Newspaper Blackout Contest.
≡It All Ends
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Working from a Wall Street Journal I took from the office this afternoon.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
George Orwell has a blog, or will starting on August 9, when each entry of the Orwell diaries will be put online 70 years later to the day. I think this will be awesome. [via maud newton]
≡Robert Frost on creative growth
Monday, July 21, 2008
I’ve been flipping through The Collected Prose of Robert Frost and came across this marvelous bit:
No one given to looking under-ground in spring can have failed to notice how a bean starts its growth from the seed. Now the manner of a poet’s germination is less like that of a bean in the ground than [...]
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Sunday, July 13, 2008
Classical and pop reviews 2, Greg Sandow’s follow-up to his previous post on the topic:
Certainly we’re not immersed in classical music because we want to check whether the latest pianist to come along really knows what to do with Beethoven — whether her tempo in the slow movement of some sonata really is correct or [...]
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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
And I quote, HARPERCOLLINS TO PUBLISH COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS!, end quote.
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