Mary Ruefle wrote an outstanding essay on her development as a writer. “I remember the first time I realized the world we are born into,” she writes, “is not the one we leave.”
“The realization that none of us can ever be free from ourselves”
Anthology of African LGBT Writing
Poet Abayomi Animashaun has issued a call for “poems by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals living in Africa and in the Diaspora.” Submissions “of high merit” will be considered for a forthcoming anthology.
To Believe Your Own Thought
Recommended Reading: Sophie Atkinson on Frank Ocean as Emersonian hero.
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On Fear and Dread
Mary Ruefle, author of the forthcoming Madness, Rack, and Honey, wrote a poetic essay on the subject of fear. It’s chock full of lines like this one about why she likes the word dread more than the word fear: “because fear, like the unconscious emotion which is one of its forms, has only the word ear inside of it, telling an animal to listen, while dread has the word read inside of it, telling us to read carefully and find the dead, who are also there.”
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Eid al-Adha Live Stream
Tonight marks the beginning of Eid al-Adha, a three-day Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, Ishmael. The annual event draws over two and a half million Muslims on Hajj to Saudi Arabia. It makes for an incredibly moving sight, and this year, thanks to Google’s partnership with the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, you can check out a live stream of the pilgrimage from the comfort of your own home.
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DJ Poet Laureate
California poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera dropped in on NPR as guest DJ last week, and you can listen to the full thirty-minute radio show, as well as five of the tracks he played.
Beauty In Things Exists
Recommended Reading: On Scottish philosopher David Hume and cultivating an effective philosophy which "understands the world in which it operates."
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