“I’m the one who gets asked, publicly, how I manage to write and teach and have three kids. Do you get those questions, or do people just assume there is a woman doing all of the homemaking so you can go upstairs and write?” Poets Tracy K. Smith and Gregory Pardlo discuss David Bowie vs. Elton John, the confessional vs. the abstract, and the balance between family and work. Also check out Sophia Nguyen’s Millions review of Smith’s new memoir, Ordinary Light.
Life on Earth
Arm on the Armrest
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Samuel Beckett Wears Short Shorts
From the Sentences We Thought We'd Never Write Department: Samuel Beckett shows some leg.
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dear Danez Smith
"But poems are not poems if they make people feel dead. I want people to feel alive – even if it is alive with grief." The Guardian profiles poet Danez Smith about poetry; race, gender, and queerness; and their poetry collection, Don't Call Us Dead (a finalist for the National Book Award). Pair with: an essay on writing that gives shape and depth to victims of criminal injustice.
Mad, Bad, and Healthy to Know
"It was spring. Byron was leaving England forever, a cloud of infamy hanging over him. (He is one of the few people you can write something like that about and have it be true; that is part of why he's so satisfying.)" Via The Awl: the adventures of John Polidori, literary vampire and doctor to Lord Byron.
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Angela Merkel Vs. Google Books
On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the opportunity to express her concern that Google Books threatens the rights of authors and potentially violates copyright laws, BusinessWeek reports.
Book Pirates
The American author is dead, long live the American author! At the New York Times, a eulogy.
Top Longreads of 2011
They say you're only as good as the company you keep. If that's the case, we're thrilled to have published Jim Santel's piece on The Moviegoer, which has made The Awl staff's list of "Top Longreads of 2011".
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Literature and the Workplace
“Poetry is not connected to my professional work - it is my personal world," says India’s newly-appointed ambassador to Argentina, Amarendra Khatua. Indeed, Khatua’s but the latest high-profile figure in Indian government to turn to creative writing to seek “emotional refuge” and a means of “battl[ing] workplace blues and the stress of decision making.”