Recommended Reading: Søren Kierkegaard and Anna Akhmatova overheard whispering on a stairwell.
Very Secret and Odd
2017 Albertine Prize Finalists Announced
Three finalists have been named for this year’s $10,000 Albertine Prize: Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi, The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal, and Bardo or Not Bardo by Antoine Volodine. Voting is open until Sunday, April 30th. Also, you can read more about Volodine’s work courtesy of Grant Munroe.
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Try to define the word “poetry” and you’ll quickly find yourself in a maze of contradictions. It refers, most obviously, to printed verse, but it can also refer to especially lyrical prose, among other things. At The Paris Review Daily, Damian Searls uses etymology to get some answers. Related: Kate Angus on loving poetry but not poetry books.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Frame, London, Stafford, Tennyson, Bennet
Janet Frame’s posthumous novel In the Memorial Room is out this week, as is a new e-book edition of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf. Also out: Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by the onetime Poet Laureate William Stafford; a new biography of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and the latest edition of The Best American Magazine Writing.
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On The Rise of the Book Trailer
“These are terrific diversions, but their status next to the book is a little ambiguous. Isn’t using animation to advertise a book a little like using sculpture to promote poetry?” asks Lindesay Irvine in this article about book trailers in The Guardian. If you’re looking for a diversion, this video short based on César Aira‘s Ghosts is certainly worth watching.
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Rote She Wrote
At The NYT Mag, Virginia Heffernan‘s “Drill, Baby, Drill” explores the possibility that drills and memorization might not be quite as oppressive as some of the kinder, gentler pedagogues of our time suggest and offers a list of aps to help aspiring rote learners (Nota Bene: VerseByHeart).
Move Over, Paula Deen
The late Colonel Harland Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken notoriety) is the author of a newly unearthed manuscript “chock full of homespun anecdotes and life lessons from Sanders, who struck it rich late in life. It also includes a heaping helping of his favorite personal recipes.” The manuscript will be published online within the next year.
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