Two French novelists, two books about dead babies: Literary cat fight, canny PR scheme, or “psychological plagiarism”? Read all about the literary feud that’s captivating France here.
Camille Laurens V. Marie Darrieussecq
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Something Borrowed, Something Stolen
Is Kenneth Goldsmith continuing to lead the charge in a revolutionary poetry movement? Has he overstepped his bounds? Is conceptual poetry dead? Alec Wilkinson for The New Yorker and Cathy Park Hong for The New Republic offer their opinions.
The Neverending MFA Debate
“Writers teach, not writing per se, but how to engage in writing as a process and a means of perception. The actual work of writing is seldom sublime. It’s a struggle that grows more difficult if we avoid it. Writing is often excruciatingly slow and repetitive. Time, in slipping and sliding, makes itself felt and immediate. Words are the way in, but nothing is guaranteed. What writers or readers can do with language, or understand inside it, depends on what they know—on refining their sensibilities, on writing, revising, waiting, reading, writing, as though living in language were life and death.” Year in Reading alumna Jayne Anne Phillips writes for the Literary Hub about the importance of writing programs. For more on the debate, check out Hannah Gersen’s Millions essay.
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Swedish Covers
50 watts, a blog dedicated to book-related design and illustration, takes a look at Swedish book covers.
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“Big, though, big head”
Last week marked the release of The Heart is Strange, a new collection of John Berryman poems released to coincide with the centenary of the poet’s birth. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring digs through the magazine’s interview archives to find Berryman’s account of meeting W.B. Yeats. Pair with: Stephen Akey on Berryman’s classic The Dream Songs.
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Portraits of the Public Commons
The subjects of photographer Robert Dawson’s latest project are beautiful, educational, and in danger; they are public libraries. For his new book, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay, Dawson visited hundreds of public libraries, from little free libraries to icons, in 48 states to photograph “our best example of the public commons.” The Morning News has a few of his photos as well as an essay on the importance of libraries by Charles Simic. “Wherever I found a library, I immediately felt at home.”