A while back, we reviewed an anthology of work by American poets laureate–that is, those appointed by the President to serve the entire United States. But there are 45 currently-serving state poets laureate, and thousands of city, county, and other poets laureate as well. What exactly do they do?
Your friendly neighborhood poet laureate
Tuesday New Release Day: Pollan, Sedaris, Stelter, Currey, Thompson, Stothard, Rutherfurd, Wecker, Riley
The headliners this week are on the non-fiction side: Michael Pollan's Cooked and Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. Also new in non-fiction: Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by the Times' Brian Stelter and Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. In fiction: The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson, The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard, Paris by Edward Rutherfurd, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley.
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On Violence
“They couldn’t testify because they were dead so I wanted to lend my own body and voice to them.” Han Kang on writing about the Gwangju massacre and her slim novels, Human Acts and The Vegetarian.
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Bad Review Bingo
Print out your playing cards and start sifting through the comment sections of negative book reviews. It's a new game called "bad review bingo." (inspired in part by the frothy commenters to our own Janet Potter's blistering review of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.)
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Forty-Four
To mark the end of the Obama years, the crew at n+1 rounded up their best writing from his presidency. Head on over to read Aziz Rana, George Blaustein, and more.
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“The town was called Dayton.”
Recommended Reading: Rachael Maddux’s “Hail Dayton,” which features one of the finest opening paragraphs ever printed.