At the recently re-launched Poems Out Loud site, you can see Stanley Kunitz talk about Gerard Manley Hopkins, and hear contemporary poets like Kim Addonizio read their own work.
Poetry!
Bad Boys
Got a crush on Draco Malfoy? J.K. Rowling is concerned. In a piece on her website, she writes: “I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character.” Pair with: our own Elizabeth Minkel on Rowling and other authors with second thoughts.
Celebrating, Not Sanitizing, Complicated Women Writers
“Somehow, in my eagerness to honor these words, I’d tamed the political intentions behind their meaning. I’d reduced my icon’s truths into affirmational pick-me-ups rather than letting them sink deeper.” Dianca Potts reflects on how to best to appreciate the fullness of Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison. We need to resist erasing their complexities in our haste to embrace them as icons or reduce them to inspirational quotes.
Letters to Gandhi
Maria Popova shares Tolstoy’s forgotten letters to Gandhi, later published as A Letter to Hindu. “Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.”
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Take Off Your Shirt, Mr. Darcy
How do you celebrate Pride and Prejudice‘s 200th birthday? By building a 12-foot tall statue of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy in his wet shirt. The fiberglass statue is temporarily installed in Hyde Park but will tour the U.K. before settling in Lyme Park, Cheshire, where the famous scene was filmed.
How To: Invent a Language
Think your novel could use a language of its own, but don’t have the philological powers of Tolkien? Then take a few lessons from Game of Throne‘s resident linguist, David J. Peterson, who turned George R.R. Martin‘s 55 Dothraki names into a 4,000 word vocabulary with a working grammar.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Poeppel; Schwalbe; Scalzi
Out this week: Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel; Books for Living by Will Schwalbe; and Miniatures by John Scalzi. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
Matthiessen’s Beginnings
In memory of Peter Matthiessen, The Missouri Review has unlocked an interview with him from 1989. Matthiessen detailed the beginning of his writing career. “I started my first novel and sent off about four chapters and waited by the post office for praise to roll in, calls from Hollywood, everything. Finally my agent sent me a letter that said ‘Dear Peter, James Fenimore Cooper wrote this a hundred and fifty years ago, only he wrote it better. Yours, Bernice.’ I probably needed that; it was very healthy.” For more Matthiessen, you can read one of his best travel essays or his new novel, In Paradise.
Disarmingly Like Love
“I quickly stopped trying to draw in a realistic way and went for an efficient one.” Max de Radiguès is a Belgian cartoonist whose work you should familiarize yourself with.
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