RIP Seamus Heaney

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RIP Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013

“Funeral Rites”

I shouldered a kind of manhood
stepping in to lift the coffins
of dead relations.
They had been laid out

in tainted rooms,
their eyelids glistening,
their dough-white hands
shackled in rosary beads.

Their puffed knuckles
had unwrinkled, the nails
were darkened, the wrists
obediently sloped.

The dulse-brown shroud,
the quilted satin cribs:
I knelt courteously
admiting it all

as wax melted down
and veined the candles,
the flames hovering
to the women hovering
behind me.
And always, in a corner,
the coffin lid,
its nail-heads dressed

with little gleaming crosses.
Dear soapstone masks,
kissing their igloo brows
had to suffice

before the nails were sunk
and the black glacier
of each funeral
pushed away.

Now as news comes in
of each neighbourly murder
we pine for ceremony,
customary rhythms:

the temperate footsteps
of a cortège, winding past
each blinded home.
I would…

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August 30, 2013 0

Oxford American features Charles Portis film adaptation

Little Rock Culture Vulture

Today, August 26, 2013, the Oxford American website features the world premiere of a film adapatation of Charles Portis’ “I Don’t Talk Service No More.”

In addition to the film, the website features an interview of the filmmaker Katrina Whalen. Jay Jennings, who edited Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany chats with Ms. Whalen about Portis and the process of making films.

Whalen worked in production for directors Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich; Adaptation; Synecdoche, New York) and Julie Taymor (Titus; Frida; Broadway’s The Lion King) after her undergrad education at Yale. She then enrolled in graduate school at New York University.

Jennings is a freelance writer whose journalism, book reviews, and humor have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, and many other newspapers and magazines.

To see the film, which…

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August 27, 2013 0

Catch This: Five Posthumous Salinger Books Reportedly On the Way

August 27, 2013 0

The Seven Deadly Sins of Prologues

Kristen Lamb's Blog

To prologue or not to prologue? That is the question. The problem with the prologue is it has kind of gotten a bad rap over the years, especially with agents. They generally hate them. Why? In my opinion, it is because far too many writers don’t use prologues properly and that, in itself, has created its own problem.

Because of the steady misuse of prologues, most readers skip them. Thus, the question of whether or not the prologue is even considered the beginning of your novel can become a gray area if the reader just thumbs pages until she sees Chapter One.

So without further ado…

The 7 Deadly Sins of Prologues

Sin #1 If your prologue is really just a vehicle for massive information dump…

This is one of the reasons I recommend writing detailed backgrounds of all main characters before we begin (especially when we are new writers)…

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August 27, 2013 0

The Enlightenment: A Graphic Guide – Lloyd Spencer, Andrzej Krauze

This might be something to look at for my World Lit. II students.

redandblackrainbows

I didn’t know much about this historical period of new intellectual dawn. You could say I was in the dark about it. But this puts the spotlight on many of its major players. In fact, it really illuminated my understanding of these bright sparks and what they did, such as leading light Voltaire. It uses the graphic novel style which has appeared throughout this series of books. Some might say that treats its complex subject material in too light a manner, but the ability to do so effectively can be quite dazzling to see. And despite the short amount of time spent on each contributor, many of them are given their moment in the sun, and the authors’ understanding of the wider issues shines through. They seem really switched on. In some ways, [light-related pun]. Because of this, [wordplay on bulbs as light fittings/bulbs in gardening – too complex maybe??]

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August 23, 2013 0

Capote: A Biography, by Gerald Clarke (2010, e-book 2013)

Books and Movies and Stuff

(nb: I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss)

After he published “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote was the most famous writer in America, if not the world. Its novelesque telling of a true story received widespread critical acclaim, intrigued the countless readers who bought the book, and was turned into a successful Hollywood film.

This was also the apex of Truman Capote’s life. He’d been successful as a writer, and he’d made friends with his “swans,” a group of incredibly wealthy and powerful women. “In Cold Blood” blew everything into the stratosphere. Capote had made it to the top of the mountain. All that was left was the incredible, ugly fall.

Gerald Clarke’s “Capote: A Biography” is widely considered the definitive story of the tiny acerbic writer who captivated readers.

Clarke spent well over a decade researching his biography, interviewing dozens of Capote’s…

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August 23, 2013 0

That Old Book Smell Is The Smell of Death

August 18, 2013 0

Readers’ Corner: The English Major

Chris Barsanti

Many will disagree with Mark Edmundson’s popular essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Ideal English Major.” Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, argues that college students should choose the English major over the pecuniary rewards of degrees in econ or business.

In a weak job market, where the crushing burden of student debt makes attending college an increasingly fraught choice, it’s welcome to see somebody beating the drum for the English degree as path towards becoming an educated person.

There may, however, only be so much one can take of Edmundson’s soaring, hard-to-choke-down conclusion:

To me an English major is someone who has decided, against all kinds of pious, prudent advice and all kinds of fears and resistances, to major, quite simply, in becoming a person. Once you’ve passed that particular course of study—or at least made some significant progress on your way—then…

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August 18, 2013 0

Quote of the Week #18: August 18, 2013

j. p. bohannon

“Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful — be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.”

Patti Smith (remembering advice she got from William S. Burroughs)

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August 18, 2013 0

Copyright, Corporate Greed, and Books You Can’t Get

pigeon weather productions

This very interesting study illustrates quite clearly how copyright and corporate greed have resulted in the unavailability of books over the past few generations. There are more books from 1910 in print today than there are from 1990. Astonishing when you think about it, because far more books were published in 1990 than in 1910, but the books published more recently are not in the public domain, won’t be for decades, and because of how the corporate publishing world operates, most of those books will never be in print in our lifetime.

Self-publishing will change this, to some extent, as more and more authors take ownership of their own copyrights and keep their books in print in perpetuity, but authors of the past few generations are shit out of luck for the most part. Their books, if they were lucky enough to get them published in the first place, remain…

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August 2, 2013 0