In 1994, Maya Angelou cooked a meal of crowder peas, okra, and beef for a crowd of 150 people. The dinner was in honor of Toni Morrison—who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the previous year—and U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Although Angelou is less often associated with cooking and food writing, she would go on to write two underrated cookbooks, Mayukh Sen writes in an article for The Guardian. In Hallelujah! The Welcome Table and Great Food, All Day Long, Angelou’s food writing “hums with the same vibrancy that marks her more prominent work.”
Maya Angelou in the Kitchen
“Hunger is the beginning”
“Desire is transformative, and transgressive: whether it’s an unpeeled onion or a noble lover, to want something, especially for women, can never be entirely benign.” Kristiana Willsey writes about folktales, fairy godmothers, childless queens and hunger in a piece for The Toast.
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In Defense of Bad Sex
We recently posted about the finalists of Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. (Morrissey’s List of the Lost was the winner!) Allan Drew writes at The Atlantic in defense of #BadSex.
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Pick and Choose
Tim Waterstone (of the giant UK chain Waterstones) will soon launch a new platform that publishes shorter works. (Like several other companies, it’s been dubbed “the Spotify of books.”)
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Cleaning Up After W.H. Auden
Growing more annoyed with your roommate during the quarantine? Comfort yourself with the knowledge that, at the very least, you're not living with W.H. Auden.
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“describe this flight / and not add a last line.”
“All poems of public grief are private poems first,” writes Mark Doty in his evaluation of Wisława Szymborska’s poem, “Photograph from September 11th.” Indeed, what Doty learned “over the course of those dozen years, was that the words one hammers out in private, in order to attempt some kind of sense, may end up being used by people in ways you could have never anticipated.”
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A Bit Florid
What were your hobbies when you were a teenager? Emily Dickinson collected flowers.
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