In May, poet David Lehman wrote the first line of a sonnet about cubicle anomie and began crowdsourcing the rest. The completed 12-week project at The American Scholar is not merely a pretty great piece on its own, but a lesson in how to write one, line by line: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8/9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. You can submit your title suggestion as late as midnight on Sunday, but we suggest getting a start on it now, while the prison of work is still fresh in mind. (h/t The New York Times)
“How like a prison is my cubicle…”
“On Stage as On Paper”
There’s just something about David Foster Wallace‘s writing that makes people want to adapt it. We’ve written about this phenomenon before – there have been Infinite Jest-inspired radio tributes and music videos, series of illustrations, even a novel-in-legos. Interest in adapting Wallace’s work doesn’t seem to be slowing, and earlier this month Public Theatre put on an experimental performance of passages of his writing and interviews, A (Radically Condensed and Expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which both Salon and Hyperallergic reviewed.
Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin, poet laureate of the river
There are poet laureates for all sorts of things these days – Queens Borough, San Mateo County, Twitter, you name it – but this is the first time I’ve heard of someone being dubbed “poet laureate of the river.”
Black Warrior Review Contest
You have the entire month of August to enter Black Warrior Review’s ninth-annual poetry, fiction, and nonfiction contest. All entrants will receive a one year subscription to the magazine, and the winners of each genre will receive a $1,000 prize as well as publication in the Spring/Summer 2014 issue.
The Illest Brother
“Wherever you are…realize that your essence is divine, son / and let it shine, son.” Peace to Guru Keith Elam, 1966 – 2010.
An Opium Eater, Reconsidered
At The Washington Post, Michael Dirda on the dissolute genius Thomas De Quincey (opium addict, original chronicler of addiction, master of the macabre, prolific C19th essayist).
New Joyce Carol Oates Story
Recommended Reading: “Sex with Camel” by Joyce Carol Oates. As she tweeted, “Never thought, when I was a child in wilds of upstate NY, that I would grow up to write a story with such a title.”