At the Creative Independent, Sabrina Orah Mark shares how her writing style evolved over the years, and how the blurring of poetry and prose gave her freedom to explore. “I think when I started writing prose poems,” Mark says, “that was when I felt like I could have the real and the unreal live inside of a little box together. Charles Simic talks about the prose poem as being this impossible form. It’s the coming together of prose and poetry and it shouldn’t exist, but it does. And finding that form allows for this marvel, for the impossible to live inside of a space. And that was really how I accessed that aesthetic or mindset or dream I was always after.”
In Search of the Impossible with Sabrina Orah Mark
A Beautiful Alternate World
Kaveh Akbar interviews poet Wendy Xu about oppressive syntax, imaginary realms, and poems as ecosystems. As she puts it, “Poetry validates the emotional realness of the imaginary.” Pair with Andrew Kay’s Millions essay on the power of poetry.
Portraits of the Public Commons
The subjects of photographer Robert Dawson’s latest project are beautiful, educational, and in danger; they are public libraries. For his new book, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay, Dawson visited hundreds of public libraries, from little free libraries to icons, in 48 states to photograph “our best example of the public commons.” The Morning News has a few of his photos as well as an essay on the importance of libraries by Charles Simic. “Wherever I found a library, I immediately felt at home.”
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Fiction Vs. Autobiography
“The unverifiable world is vast and accommodating.” From Robert Atwan’s essay (pdf) “A Remarkable Orgasm, A Dying Pig, and A Scarlet Letter: Is It Truth, Fiction, or… Autobiography?” (via @maudnewton)
For Whom the Blog Tolls
The awesome Left Coast literary magazine Black Clock, whose presiding spirit is Steve Erickson, gets into the blogging game.
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Book ownership and education
In Salon, Laura Miller discusses two new studies showing a correlation between the number of books in a child’s household and the level of education that child’s likely to attain: “Children with as few as 25 books in the family household completed on average two more years of schooling than children raised in homes without any books.”
I Found One Job in Your Area
“Siri, I need something.” Beep. “What can I help you with?” “Siri, I want to fix you. I want to rewrite your dialogue.” Beep beep. “I can help you with that.”