Recommended Reading: Laura Van Prooyen’s poem at The Missouri Review “Location: Frances.” “When I say Frances, I mean a woman. I mean/a place. The dead cling to the land.”
Finding Frances
The Shakespeare Oxford Society
Unsurprisingly, the Oxfordian theory-inspired blockbuster Anonymous is ruffling some feathers in college English departments. The “Shakespeare Oxford Society,” of course, has a rejoinder.
2012’s Most “Looked Up” Words
According to the Merriam-Webster editors, the two most “looked up” words of 2012 were “capitalism” and “socialism.” Other words in the top ten? “Bigot,” “democracy,” and “meme.”
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Free Poetry!
How would like to receive some free issues of Poetry magazine for your book club? Poetry, by the way, answered our call in our Tumblr round-up and has since joined the platform.
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Poems… In… Space!!!!
Thanks to NASA, three poets will have a chance to boldly go where no poets have gone before: Mars. Indeed, an online contest is currently open in which users can submit haiku to accompany the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, which is scheduled for launch in late 2013. The MAVEN project will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. More details about sending poetry into outer space can be found here.
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Books for the Trump Era
“[T]hat might be what liberal readers needs right now: Not just portraits of the Brexit and Trump-voting domestic Other, but a clearer sense of their own worldview’s limits, blind spots, blunders and internal contradictions.” The New York Times‘s Ross Douthat assembles a “Books for the Trump Era” reading list, including Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, Christopher Lasch‘s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, and Samuel P. Huntington‘s Who Are We? The Challenges to American National Identity. You can also read our own review of Houellebecq’s latest here.
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