“What happens when everyone’s a poet?” asked Marjorie Perloff in the Boston Review. Now, Mike Chasar and Jed Rasula debate what that popularity might actually mean for contemporary poetry.
Populist Poetics
Not So Smart
Ava Kofman writes about Disney’s Smart House becoming a reality (or just making our lives more difficult).
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The Swamp of the Non-Reader
Jonathan Gourlay used to read all the time, then one day he stopped. “I knew that I had taken up residence in the swamp of the non-reader. Here is what life is like in that swamp.”
Your Local Unpaid Librarian
“They would have closed, if the community hadn’t stepped forward.” The Guardian reports on the rapidly growing number of British libraries being run by volunteers, a trend driven by austerity cuts (which Corinne Purtill wrote about in these very pages just a few weeks ago).
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Bright Eyes
After the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska died fighting in the trenches, Ezra Pound wrote a book about his work, inspiring a wave of interest that brought the sculptor to prominence. The book came out in 1916, a year after Gaudier-Brzeska’s death, and kicked off a succession of great books that tackle his sculptures. Yasmine Seale writes about their legacy in the LRB.
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Tiger, Tiger
The second movie trailer for Ang Lee’s upcoming adaptation of Life of Pi by Yann Martel has just been released.
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“Depression has a peculiar texture”
Recommended Reading: Larissa Pham on Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. You could also read Holloway McCandless on the author’s By Nightfall.
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Gentleman Seeking a Lady in Glasses
Are you a guy with good taste in frames and fiction? Then come to the next I Like Your Glasses: Literary Speed Dating. CoverSpy and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe will be hosting the event on February 12 at the store. Tickets are $15 (including a free drink), but gents can get their tickets for $12 if they use the promotional code “QUEEQUEG.” To see what you’re in for, read our essay on attending the first I Like Your Glasses.
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