“I really do hate the idea that black joy itself is a joy derived in spite of. While it may indeed include that, limiting it to such assumes that joy among black people only exists as a defiant response to oppression from white people. I’d rather believe that black folk are capable of this deep supernatural sense without having to be enslaved or disenfranchised.” For the Boston Review, Jericho Brown on poetry and joy.
Poetry and Joy
“I was born as a woman, I talk you to death”
Recommended Reading: “The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks” by Patricia Lockwood, which has been in my head for two days now.
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Populist Poetics
“What happens when everyone’s a poet?” asked Marjorie Perloff in the Boston Review. Now, Mike Chasar and Jed Rasula debate what that popularity might actually mean for contemporary poetry.
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Yea or Nay
In the mid-90s, David Foster Wallace published a scathing review of a John Updike novel, Toward the End of Time, that became a key text for critics of the celebrated author. Now, at The New Republic, David Baddiel argues that Updike gets a bad rap, while Jeffrey Meyers backs up DFW’s position. It might also be a good time to read James Santel’s review of Updike’s Collected Stories.
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Fear in Christian America
Recommended Reading: Marilynne Robinson on the functions of fear and Christianity in America in The New York Review of Books. You could also check out Alex Engebretson’s essay comparing Robinson’s Housekeeping to the Gilead novels.
Between a Rock and a Bookless Place
As libraries struggle to survive in the UK, community-based lending libraries are sprouting up to fill in the gaps. The Society of Authors is threatening to take legal action against these libraries after discovering that they are not required to pay any royalties to authors.
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“There are myriad roles for poets”
The Academy of American Poets is conducting six-question interviews with six different poets in anticipation of the 2012 Poets Forum (October 18-20). Over at BOMB, you can read the first installment, which features Mary Jo Bang.
Walt Whitman: Bottled and Brewed
Bell's Brewery, in Kalamazoo Mich., is set to release a series of seven beers in tribute to Walt Whitman's famous poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
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L337 5P34K, on the other hand…
“Slang is here to stay, not as the enemy of Standard English but as its partner.”
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