“Grief doesn’t only disturb life; it disturbs the way we talk about life. As myriad aspects of our existence are questioned and reexamined in the wake of a death, so too is our relationship with the language we rely on for our grief’s expression.” This track-by-track take on Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell from The Rumpus is really just a magnificent, emotive piece on elegy.
Should’ve Known Better
Recovering Iris Murdoch
With many of her books no longer in print, Iris Murdoch's posthumous reputation leaves much to be desired, and her ardent fans seek to rectify this.
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“An index also lays out the complexity of the book into pristine statements”
In a neat little essay for Vouched Books, Kyle Winkler advocates indexing as a means of tempering the “fuckstorm of reading.”
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“Surprise attacks”
Last week, I pointed to former Millions-er Emily M. Keeler’s review of Wolf in White Van, the new novel by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Now, at Slate, Carl Wilson offers his own praise of the book, which he describes as “not the kind of rallying cry or dark comfort that Mountain Goats fans are used to, but a complex meditation.”
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New Michael Robbins Poetry
The latest issue of Poetry magazine features four of Michael Robbins’s first “post-Alien vs. Predator” poems: “Big Country,” “Be Myself,” “The Second Sex,” and “That’s Incredible!” Robbins was also a recent participant in our Year In Reading series.
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Imaginary Oklahoma
“Imaginary Oklahoma” writes Oklahoman writer James McGirk, “is an anthology of forty-six writers’ attempts to envision Oklahoma without ever having visited America’s forty-sixth state.” You can get a taste for the pieces over at The Paris Review, or you can check out the book trailer and attempt to envision The Paris Review‘s write-up without actually reading it.
Not I
John Clare, “the peasant poet,” wrote wide-ranging poems on rural themes, distinguishing himself from his peers in the 19th-century literary scene in England. In 1830, in the midst of an episode of depression, he wrote a long polemic against the first-person pronoun, in the form of a letter to his friend Eliza Emmerson. In The Paris Review Daily, an excerpt of the letter.
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Presidential Poetry
Much ado was made about “One Today,” Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem for president Barack Obama, but also worth checking out is Paul Muldoon’s “For Barack Obama: His Second Inauguration.”
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The Salmon Is Inedible
Recommended Reading: The inimitable Umberto Eco on how to travel with a salmon.
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