The Brooklyn Rail‘s InTranslation section has launched a new poetry series, 100 Refutations. Created by author and translator Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., the series will feature a daily poem “from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States.” Pair with: The Millions’ Surviving Trump column.
Refusing to be Silenced
W.S. Merwin, Surrounded by Green
A. Hope Jahren remembers W.S. Merwin with an evocative description of visiting the Merwin Conservancy, an island filled with trees Merwin planted himself.
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Tweeting for Posterity
You too can be in the Library of Congress. O’Reilly Radar checks in on the LoC’s efforts to build a Twitter archive.
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Resurrecting Dylan Thomas
The Welsh government is hoping that Dylan Thomas can do for Swansea what James Joyce has done for Dublin. This year, officials have announced that £750,000 will be made available for the DT 100 Festival, which will celebrate the centennial of the poet’s birth. Aside from boosting tourism, however, the festival’s organizers also hope to “raise the status of Thomas,” who many feel has “[been] neglected [and had] his work … overshadowed by a conception of the man as a drunkard, scrounger and womaniser.”
Breakfast at History’s
The evolution of the celebrity profile should be divided into two eras, one pre- and the other post-T.C.: Truman Capote.
Let’s Trade Manuscripts
“If you ask around, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a really bad novel easily enough. I mean a novel by someone who has spent isolated years writing a book they are convinced is a great work of literature. And when you’re reading it you’ll know it’s bad, and you’ll know what bad truly is.” What makes bad writing so bad? Toby Litt at The Guardian investigates.
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Let There Be
“LET THERE BE stress. Let the body respond to stress as it does to injury and infection. Let stress be a vulture that pecks at the mind and devours the body. This will make people less likely to be stressed. When they see stress wreak wrath upon the body, they will surely calm down a lot.” It seems the big problem with intelligent design is that it had a pretty sub-par peer review.
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