Quote of the Day

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair.

-BAUDELAIRE

Quote of the Day

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.

–TURGENEV

Quote of the Day

Get up, dear animal.
Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river, your bleeding
barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower your lashes,
the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you fresh hay.

–MATTHEA HARVEY

Quick Clicks

After a brief hiatus, I am back. With a vengeance. To the future. In Black. Whatever.

So much good stuff today! Check it out:

This really hit home for me: Courtney Queeney describes the ambivalence she feels about being a female poet over at Bookslut.

I’m hooked on Boomkat. If you’re not already, consider this your permission get obsessed.

Pop Candy lists the 10 Best Album Covers of 2009 so far. The AOL Radio blog lists the 10 Worst.

A new Radiohead single appears to have leaked. Listen to it at Stereogum. You can read an excerpt of an interview with Thom Yorke in the current issue of The Believer. After work I’m going to buy a copy so I can read the full article and just enjoy The Believer’s amazingness in its entirety.

So… you found my iPhone, huh?

This great Slate article takes a look at “seeking,” the crux of most human and animal behavior, and how it is tied to the rise of Googling, Twittering, and texting. In a related article, the New York Times talks about how these same technologies are creating a wave of mistrials in courts all over the country.

The Telegraph remembers David Foster Wallace.

Poems for Shark Week. Oh, poets.org– how you amuse me.

Too Sexy for my Dust Jacket

Maud Newton takes another look at a long-debated issue: the hot young writer. She counts Oscar Wilde as perhaps the first writer to wear that type of mantle and its ensuing problems. I remember reading an article a while back (the location escapes me) that discussed Mary Gaitskill’s sex appeal. Specifically, the author of the article had referred to this picture, below, citing Gaitskill’s come-hither regard and poised lean onto the bed she’s seated on as overt attempts to sexualize her based on her beauty and the nature of the stories she writers.

My friends and I often joke about this phenomenon as well, bellowing out “author photo!” whenever someone coincidentally assumes a quirky or awkwardly “literary” pose. I don’t think that it harms the sanctity of what we do to have photos like this one of Gaitskill. So often we are urged to stay out of the writing, to recede into the shadows and let the work speak for itself, which is sage advice to be sure. But it is nice, however, to poke your head(shot) out once and a while to put a face to the work. I was at the Poets & Writers Summer Magazine Party on Monday, and my friend and I were remarking that it often took us minutes to realize who certain writers in attendance were, if we recognized them at all. I think it’s hard for writers to make peace with visual representations of themselves. They’d much rather turn, as always, to words.

Fly Baby

PETA is irate with artist Damien Hirst over his latest piece of art: this bicycle covered with hundreds of butterfly wings. Hirst created the bike for Lance Armstrong, who will ride it during the last leg of the Tour de France. Some of the butterflies used for the piece may have been endangered.

Personally, I’m a fan of his work, particularly ones like Our Father Who Art in Heaven and Hail Mary Full of Grace, in which skinned sheep suspended in formaldehyde kneel, holding rosaries and bibles. Pieces like this draw attention to the base, almost beastly aspects of our cultural and spiritual lives or lack thereof. I think the bike is incredible. And I don’t think Hirst went around ghoulishly ripping the wings from living butterflies. I’m sure he has a bit more sense and compassion than that.

I wrote a poem about his piece, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which I’ve included after the jump.

Quote of the Day

In summer, the song sings itself.

–WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Washington Square Midsummer Party

The Washington Square Midsummer Party is tonight at Happy Ending on Broome St. 7:30 pm and it is free free free. John Yau, Timothy Liu, Miranda Field, Ben Mirov, Katherine Bogden, Porter Fox, and Conrad Woolfe will be reading. And I will be there basking in literary delight. Come one and all.

Death Match, Sans Claymation

The Guardian has an article up about the recent literary death match held in the UK. Opium magazine holds these all over the country and now in Europe. Pairs of writers read their work back to back and are judged by a panel. The final round has winners from previous rounds performing non-literary feats and playing games for the final victory. The next death match will be here in NYC on Thursday, July 30 at the Bowery Poetry Club. Who wants to go with me?

Quote of the Day

Only in one’s mother tongue can one express one’s own truth. In a foreign language, the poet lies.

–PAUL CÉLAN