right*write*rite (Free subscription) | 21 hours ago
I know you didn’t mean it to me directly, but in one poem (exceptionally read), you stuck a huge stick of dynamite up in me and blasted everything I believe in, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Although I applaud, from a place as deep as my doubt, after everything you do, I sat there silent, and then left the room. I didn’t have anything to say. I hate feeling stupid. I felt...
A Room of One's Own (Free subscription) | yesterday
"Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then...
] Outside the Lines [ (Free subscription) | 27/11/2009
These have been going 'round the poetry blogosphere a bit, but I had to share a few here. Click for more! Arthur Rimbaud and Thomas Chatterton walk into a bar. They are carded. Sylvia Plath walks into a bar. The bartender says,”What’s cookin’, good lookin’”? Gertrude Stein walks into a bar, thinking it was a bar. But it was a bar. John Ashbery walks into a bar. The bartender...
Sylvia Plath Info (Free subscription) | 26/11/2009
Now that the holiday season is upon us... Do you have 10 quid hanging around. If so, you might think about getting yourself a Sylvia Plath Ariel coffee mug . The mug reproduces Faber's 2001 publication and woud likely make drinking coffee, tea, hot chocolate (with Bailey's) a more intense experience. This also seems an appropriate time to give notice that according to Amazon.co.uk, look for a new hardback...
Something of the Night (Free subscription) | 26/11/2009
As I’m a guest on the Radio Four show ‘Off the Page’ today, it suddenly occured to me that I might, just might, get some increased traffic here, and that first time visitors might wish to see something other than my discussion with my Italian translator, or my tribute to Sylvia Plath. In fact, it occured [...]
Jacket Copy (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
Decades ago, real life became the stuff of novels -- everyone knew "The Bell Jar" was taken from Sylvia Plath's own experience, but nobody wanted to call it a memoir. Flash forward to James Frey and reverse it -- he...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
TWO THANKSGIVING POEMS BY BILLY COLLINS Reprinted with permission from "The Dreadest Feast: Writers on Enduring the Holidays" published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang edited by Taylor Plimpton and Michele Clarke. 1. Thanksgiving Morning The crossed multiple blades of the blender set out to dry on a counter. The corkscrew unsheathed and ready to enter whatever cannot resist its twisting. The...
LIVE ON CAMPUS :: the world is your campus :: (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
Filed under: Hey LOCstars, Hindu College is pleased to invite you to Bacchanalia, the annual Literary Society/English Department festival, on the 26th and 27th of November. Bacchanalia is a recognized and established event in the Delhi University literary circuit. It’s fun, challenging, creative and competitive. The festival revolves around various events intended to draw out the skills of participants...
sOmEThiNg foR thE wEEkenD, SIR? (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it_____ A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify'------- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And...
georgiasam (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
The Monk of Montaudon: touchy twelfth-century French bloke, ‘always going off on one’, as a student once described Sylvia Plath to me. Hereunder a version from my vaults, my vaults, of his enueg (Beckettian genre!) ‘ Fort m’enoia, si auzes dire... ’ What gets my goat, if you don’t mind, is the sort whose promises are all wind, the armchair ‘up-and-at-’em’...
The Girl on the Milk Carton (Free subscription) | 25/11/2009
Because I've been thinking about literature lately. For children: Matilda by Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle Charlotte's Web by E. B. White Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine Holes by Louis Sachar The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech The Giver by Lois Lowry Number...
Exoskeleton (Free subscription) | 24/11/2009
[I got this from Fence:] In this third collection, Catherine Wagner assumes a mantle of responsibility. Her slangy, spoken, and singing world of representation slides from syntactic unit to unit, making room for a galaxy of metonymy. “Things mean,” she writes, “and I can’t tell them not to.” In each of the four series that make up this book we find a female body watching...
Flavorwire (Free subscription) | 23/11/2009
If you haven't already heard, it looks like America's favorite performance artist Lady Gaga — she of the fashion envelope pushing — is definitely ineligible to be nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy when the awards for 2009 are awarded early next year despite reports to the contrary. Why, you ask? Because she was already nominated last year for "Just Dance" back when her only...
Something of the Night (Free subscription) | 23/11/2009
A correspondant, a noted crime writer, contacted me today re. my Sylvia Plath clerihew, which I recited to him a few years ago, in a taxi up to Lumb Bank after a few beers in Hebden Bridge, and with which I’ve managed to cause a great deal of upset over the years. I sent him [...]
Silliman's Blog (Free subscription) | 23/11/2009
She was the youngest winner ever of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the first one born in the 20 th century. Just 24, it wasn’t even her first book, coming seven years after The House of Silk. He was older and more established, holding the post that is now called Poet Laureate of the United States. Not only were they husband & wife, but she was also the great-great granddaughter of Percy...
Videos