NPR

My twitter poem is being broadcast today on NPR’s Tell Me More. You can click here to find when the show airs in your area. As soon as the audio posts online, I’ll post it here as well!

 

**UPDATE: Here it is, as promised. My tweeted verse of the day for April 6, 2011 on NPR.

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

Quick Clicks

The Economist takes a look at what happens when writers quit drinking.

Eight flop albums by actors. Hilarious.

The Oxford American publishes a list of 50 greatest short stories.

John Stewart hosts a Douche-Off.

Carlene Bauer’s memoir is about being a… good girl?

Louis Menand reviews Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel: Inherent Vice.

The year of awkward young men. Oh god, I loved Adventureland.

Quote of the Day

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

-W.B. YEATS

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.

Quote of the Day

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

–WILLIAM FAULKNER

for S.

And That’s The Way It Was

When Walter Cronkite was just 18, he was a cub reporter for the University of Texas at Austin’s newspaper. When I worked for The Michigan Daily, I got to interview Lily Tomlin.

He got to interview Gertrude Stein.

The interview is pretty amazing. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to sit across from her. You can read the full text of the article, originally printed on March 22, 1935, at The Daily Texan.

Quote of the Day

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

–T.S. ELIOT

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.