Looking for something to watch this weekend? Got Hulu Plus? Well, start working your way through the veritable treasure trove that is the Criterion Collection. And don’t worry. If you’re as overwhelmed by the selection as I am, this top ten list by filmmaker Dean Peterson can serve as a great guide. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m partial to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev.
Get Your Popcorn Ready. The Criterion Collection Hits Hulu Plus.
Constraint-Based Poetry: Round Two
I didn’t expect to find a Chinese poem more ornate than Su Hui’s palindromic, pre-oulipan “Xuanji Tu,” but apparently I underestimated myself. Here’s “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den,” a 92-character poem by Yuen Ren Chao which relies on the tonal variations of a single sound (shi) to tell the story of a “lion addict” with a taste for big cats. For a really crazy experience, I recommend listening to the poem being read aloud.
Recommended Reading: Rose McLarney
Recommended Reading: The Missouri Review’s poem of the week is Rose McLarney’s “Arcadia” from the fall 2013 issue. “It’s the feeling of the inquiry, ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?,’ a traveler gets when she walks into a new place and still, somehow, recognizes a quality in a face, or can somehow hum a refrain in an otherwise strange song,” she writes about her poetry.
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Catching the Muse, So to Speak
From Easel Orgy to Orgy in Oils, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech has rounded up dozens of sleazy paperback covers depicting artists intimately engaged in their work. (Side Note: it seems like the couple in Bride’s Dilemma is a tad overdressed.)
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Karen Russell, Short Story Sorcerer
A master of the short story, Karen Russell discusses supernatural metaphors for motherhood, lonely mutants, and the pleasures of world-building.
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“Fat guy. They knew.”
Recommended Reading: Ray Shea’s essay at Hobart “Fat Guy.” “I want to say that I shrunk into my shoes and disappeared, but when somebody throws ‘fat guy’ at you, you don’t shrink, you grow. You bloat.”
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The Boss’s Papers
Bruce Springsteen’s archive is headed to Monmouth University, which is located in his hometown: Long Branch, New Jersey.
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