Jorge Luis Borges
The great Argentine author reads "Arte Poética" in this clip with English subtitles. Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986.
Art Spiegelman's Favorite Books, a Hundred-Year-Old Book Club in Illinois, and More
The Motorola Xoom takes on the iPad; a hundred-year-old book club in Illinois; Art Spiegelman's favorite books at the Strand Book Store in New York City; selling books in a clothing store; and other news.
February 28
Flip through the dictionary and randomly choose ten words. Write a poem with each word in every other line.
Here We Go (A Pantoum)
As if a pantoum isn't hard enough to write, this poet decided to make a short film to go along with it. The poetic form is composed of a series of quatrains in which the first and third lines of each stanza are repeated as the second and fourth lines of the next. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth lines of the penultimate stanza; the second and final lines of the last stanza are the third and first lines of the first stanza. Got that? Now watch this.
The End of African American Literature, Bibliotherapy for Couples, and More
Twelve promising British first-time novelists; bibliotherapy for couples; the end of African American literature; creating erasure poetry from hate speech; and other news.
Innovator of American Verse Wins Bollingen Prize
The Yale University Library announced yesterday the winner of the one-hundred-thousand-dollar Bollingen Prize for a poet's lifetime contributions to the art.
The award goes to "fierce elegist" Susan Howe, author of works of poetry and lyric prose that weave together "history and mysticism, Puritan New England devotional writing and the Irish folk Ballad, visual lyricism and dramatic narrative, scholarship and memoir."
According to judges Peter Gizzi, Marjorie Perloff, and Claudia Rankine, Howe's most recent book, That This, published by New Directions in December, "makes manifest the raw edges of elegy through the collision of verse and prose, visionary lyricism and mundane incident, ekphrasis, visual patterning, and the reclamation of historical documents." Howe wrote the book after the sudden death of her husband, scholar Peter H. Hare, in 2008.
Howe's oeuvre also includes the poetry collections Souls of the Labadie Tract (2007), The Midnight (2003), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (2002), Pierce-Arrow (1999), Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974–1979 (1996), The Nonconformist's Memorial (1993), all published by New Directions, and Singularities (Wesleyan University Press, 1990). She is author of the prose volumes The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (Wesleyan University Press, 1993) and My Emily Dickinson (North Atlantic Books, 1985).
The Bollingen Prize has been given biennially since 1948 to honor American poets. Past winners include John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and Adrienne Rich.
Poetic Filibuster in Madison, Wisconsin
On the fifth day of protests at the Wisconsin state capital in Madison, poet Kai Carlson-Wee, a student in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, participated in the public filibuster opposing legislation introduced by the state's governor, Scott Walker, that could strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. On Friday the state Assembly passed the controversial bill; it still has to pass the state Senate.
World Book Night, the Tahrir Book Festival, PEN World Voices, and More
The PEN World Voices Festival lineup is announced; World Book Night takes place in Trafalgar Square in London on March 4; the Tahrir Book Fair springs up in place of the canceled Cairo International Book Fair in Egypt; Libyan poet Khaled Mattawa talks about the ongoing demonstrations in his country; and other news.
February 24
Write a scene for a story, set in a kitchen, with two characters. One of the characters is keeping a secret from the other. (The secret can be as big as, "You're adopted" or as small as, "I forgot to pay the cable bill.") The character with the secret doesn't reveal it, but still the secret bears down on everything the characters say to each other, the way they touch or don't touch each other, the things and places they turn their eyes to. Let the secrets either emerge or disappear, depending on the way the story evolves.
This week's fiction prompt comes from novelist Lauren Grodstein, author most recently of A Friend of the Family (Algonquin Books, 2009).
Benjamin Percy
Fiction writer and frequent Poets & Writers Magazine contributor Benjamin Percy recently spoke with interviewer Max Pearlstein about the importance of place in his novels and short stories, the MFA program at Iowa State University where he teaches, and his attempt, in everything he writes, to thrill his readers.
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