Last week marked the release of The Heart is Strange, a new collection of John Berryman poems released to coincide with the centenary of the poet’s birth. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring digs through the magazine’s interview archives to find Berryman’s account of meeting W.B. Yeats. Pair with: Stephen Akey on Berryman’s classic The Dream Songs.
“Big, though, big head”
Tips on Surviving Cancer
Rebecca Pederson's Tips On Surviving Your Cancer: Make it your Facebook status, shave your head, obtain at least one TV series box set and one reliable barf bucket, and more on Hairpin.
Thou thing of no bowels thou!
Behold the Shakespearean insult generator, thou globe of sinful continents.
The Particular Pleasures of Literature
At 3 Quarks Daily, Akeel Bilgrami’s essay on the pleasures of literature: “To understand what is special about literature is not to delegate the emotions to literature while retaining thought for philosophy and science. The idea is to find in the distinctly expressive function of literature, a refusal of that tired dualism.” (via Book Bench)
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Love Sonnet
If you haven’t watched it already, you should now. Lin-Manuel Miranda reads a sonnet in honor of his wife and the victims of the Orlando massacre at the Tony Awards. “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”
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Know thy bic
Because you've probably never bothered to get to know your stalwart writing companion: A history of the ballpoint pen.
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Evaluate The Integral of Genius
“Courage is not a word I’d use to describe a lot of today’s fiction. Writing, M.F.A. students are often told, is a messy exploration of the self. The result can be a suffocating narcissism, a lack of interest in the kind of extrapolation and exploration that is necessary to both mathematics and literature.” At Page-Turner, Alexander Nazaryan urges young writers to learn math.
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your brain is going soft with all that comedy
Vito Corleone, comedian.
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