Philip Levine is the current US Poet Laureate, and that’s great, but wouldn’t we all rather live in this alternate world fashioned by The Onion?
“The truth of poetry is not the truth of history”
Green Girl and Zipper Mouth Release Party
If you like leading ladies so blazing they burn a hole in your head, make way to the East Village on Tuesday evening to hear Kate Zambreno and Laurie Weeks read at Dixon Place. Their latest novels, Green Girl and Zipper Mouth, depict intense, edgy women with razor-sharp prose. And befitting both protagonists, there will be an after-party with DJs and projections that will go on till…?
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Chicken or Hen?
“Katrina Dodson has spent more time thinking about the word ‘chicken’ than you have spent thinking about anything.” The Stranger sits down with Katrina Dodson, translator of Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories. Pair with Dodson’s Year in Reading.
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Sprechen?
Recently, a Czech linguist named Jakob Murian came up with an estimate of the number of languages your average European speaks. The study is complicated, however, by the question of how much you need to know to really understand a given language. At the LRB’s blog, Glen Newey asks: are you fluent when you can order a beer, or when you can translate Virgil? Pair with: Abigail Rasminsky on learning to speak German.
Girl Prodigies
Millions contributor Michelle Dean wrote for The New Yorker‘s Page Turner about Opal Whiteley, whose childhood diary–written when she was six on scraps of paper–was published over 100 years ago to meet with acclaim, then controversy, and then obscurity. If girl prodigies interest you as much as they do me, you’ll also love this 2010 piece from Lapham’s Quarterly, on Barbara Newhall Follett.
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Voting is open for the 3QD Prize
Voting is open for the 3 Quarks Daily Literature Prize! We are proud to tell you that nine essays from The Millions have been nominated, alongside over 50 other worthy contenders. Take a look, and don’t forget to cast your vote!