“To fully understand poetry, familiarize yourself with the elements of a poem, such as meter, which is 3.28 feet.” Katie Burgess teaches us how to properly read a poem for The Rumpus’ Funny Women column.
Poetry for Dummies
Smaller bits
The internet has allowed self-publishing to become tremendously popular, but writers have been limited in their ability to create custom designed books. A new site called Blurb is offering book creation software that allows you to build your own book. Then they print it for you. It’s meant for creating a one off gift or keepsake, and the prices seem somewhat steep, but it’s probably better than what you would get from a professional print shop.The Bookfinder.com Journal discusses the US Copyright Office’s new report on orphan works (“Orphan works are copyrighted materials whose owners are difficult or impossible to locate, meaning they can no longer be purchased, reprinted, cited at length, or otherwise built upon. Books can get ‘orphaned’ for all sorts of reasons.”) New rules will hopefully make it easier to republish out of print work that has disappeared because copyright holders cannot be found.The Baltimore Sun reports on a man who tried to build his book collection by checking out more than 402 books on as many as 10 different library cards. The fine? Three years in prison.
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Perfectly Imperfect Proust
In a piece for the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about a new life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the first translator of Proust into English, and about the strange success and beauty his imperfect translation of Remembrance of Things Past achieved. The essay as a whole pairs well with both our own Bill Morris‘s essay against literary biography and Barclay Bram Shoemaker‘s Millions review of Mo Yan‘s Frog and “the trouble with translation.”
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Too Dark for TV
“This is a huge generalization, but [American novels] have tended not to have all the elements that make it good for television, whether it’s too interior or there’s not enough action. The Brits tended to write more colorful stories rather than the darkness and struggle. Dickens and Trollope certainly knew how to write sequels, books that would make good ongoing series again and again. And the greatest love stories are in the Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice. I don’t know what our equivalent is.” In a piece for The Atlantic Spencer Kornhaber wonders, “Is American Literature Too Dark for TV?“
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A Story of Immigrants
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The Future of the Book (& the Future of the ‘Do)
Could e-books be one 2012 presidential candidate’s secret weapon? Perhaps. So, too, could a very talented hair stylist.
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The Poetry of Borders
Over at the Southern Humanities Review, Javier Zamora, Veronica Marquez, and others share their poems in a special feature for undocumented writers. Pair with Andrew Kay’s Millions essay on the power of poetry.
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The Cheryl Strayed Trend
Call it the Eat, Pray, Love effect for the nature lover. Cheryl Strayed fans are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail after being inspired by Wild. Strayed says she’s received more than 1,000 emails from people ready to lace up their hiking boots, but a trail information specialist says he’s only seen six women make the full trek.