“He was a sassy youngster…[A]s to burning the epistle up or not—it never occurred to me to do anything at all: what the hell did I care whether he was pertinent or impertinent? he was fresh, breezy, Irish: that was the price paid for admission—and enough: he was welcome!” Turns out Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker were pen pals.
“He was a sassy youngster”
Citations Needed
Internet trivia addicts, today is your lucky day. The Houghton Library at Harvard is hiring a Wikipedian in Residence.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Occupy Lessons
Does Washington D.C. still have enough revolutionary spirit to drive the Occupy movement to the impossible-to-ignore phase of Resurrection City? Even after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, his message of economic equality presses on.
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‘Confessional Writing’ Is a Tired Line of Sexist Horseshit
"If I’m writing something about my period, it doesn’t mean that I’m not an intellectual. I can write an intellectual essay about my navel or a whole book about my period." The Literary Hub has a transcript of Red Ink's panel discussion on literary misfits, including Marcy Dermansky, Melissa Febos, Michele Filgate, Sarah Gerard, Emily Raboteau, and Lidia Yuknavitch. And we will never, ever miss a chance to mention Yuknavitch's essay in our own pages about grief.
Between Imitation and Plagiarism
"Language on a daily basis is being recycled. Our students are learning the language of the old and new masters; they are taking them in, mixing their words with the language they know, creating something new. Yet something there remains. Something familiar. Something like a forgotten first kiss. Like a well-known song sung in a different language." Ira Sukrungruang on "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Deep Reading and Mimicry, With an Ending that Totally Plagiarizes Wallace Stevens." After all, who doesn't want to plagiarize Wallace Stevens?
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On Hating Poetry
Ben Purkert reviews Year in Reading alum Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry. If you like the title, check out ten poems for people who hate poetry.