Writing for Lapham’s Quarterly, Caroline Alexander takes a deep dive into Homer’s “wine-dark sea” to uncover the origins and meaning behind the poet’s “incomprehensible” phrase.
The Gray Salt Sea, The Wine-Dark Sea
“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?”
Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch performed a haunting interpretation of “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats, and the actor has also recently signed on to play Hamlet on the London stage in autumn 2014. This raises the question: is Cumberbatch the British James Franco?
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“Gaza, Timna, my Valley girl / who spilled me in broad daylight.”
James Lasdun, whose forthcoming memoir was covered by yours truly in our Great Second-Half 2012 Book Preview, has a new poem in Poetry Magazine. Read it if you like cool things.
The Full Stop Book Club
Hot new online magazine Full Stop has chosen The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books as its inaugural book club selection. The discussion will be happening all this week.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Smiley; Pittard; Donohue; Cook; Gavron; Roth; MacFarlane; Barthelme; Rankine; Robinson
Out this week: Some Luck by Jane Smiley; Reunion by Hannah Pittard; The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue; Man V. Nature by Diane Cook; The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron; The Hundred Days by Joseph Roth; The Figures of Beauty by David MacFarlane; There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme; Citizen by Claudia Rankine; and Lila by Marilynne Robinson. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.