By Shadab Zeest Hashmi
Betrayals
Who stepped on my wings
my tea-stained
dog-eared wings
when I was climbing up the library ladder? …
[Read more…]
BOOK REVIEW: Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Sandman Slim, otherwise known as James Stark, thinks of himself as a monster. But for fans of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim supernatural revenge series, Stark is a beloved monster — half angel, half human, and avenger through and through. And fans will be thrilled with the release this week of the fourth novel in the series, “Devil Said Bang.”
[Read more…]
Interview : Author Selden Edwards Talks About Time Travel and Time Dislocation
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing
Native Californian Selden Edwards is a born teacher, a convenient fact for a lifelong educator, Edwards’ career until his 2003 retirement. Except he didn’t stop teaching, not after the novel manuscript he had nurtured for 30 years became, in his supposed retirement, a 2008 best-selling novel — “The Little Book,” a story of time travel that carries protagonist Wheeler Burden from 1988 California to 1897 Vienna. Neither did Edwards stop teaching with his second novel, a sequel set in 1918, called “The Lost Prince,” from which he will be reading Friday at Warwick’s in La Jolla.
Even a recent phone interview — and a lively, fast-paced interview it was — turned into an enthusiastic introduction to the United States’ Progressive Era, a brief overview of existential individualism, and a synopsis of the Gilded Age. It seemed a natural and perfectly entertaining teaching opportunity, as are his novels. [Read more…]
Our Poetry Place – WMD
WMD
In countries
where people read
A writer
would rot in prison
for burning his president in prose
in the land that manufactured Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
remote-controlled drones [Read more…]
Why We Need More Poetry in Our Lives
By Karen Kenyon
“We are hungry for the secret news about life,” said former poet laureate, the late Stanley Kunitz. He was speaking of the news that poetry delivers.
Most Americans just don’t get this deep soulful daily news.
We don’t know the names of our great poets.
We don’t pay our great poets much (the majority of poetry anthologies pay in copies — most very accomplished poets teach at universities or other schools, in order to survive). Poets’ paychecks are either nil or less than even an outfielder in a minor minor league. Even our Poet Laureates are only given a stipend of $35,000. They are not household names.
Thousands don’t fill a stadium to hear a poet here in America — unless that poet is also a musician — say, Dylan or John Lennon. It’s a different story in many other countries.
The poets often speak, or spoke, for the people. [Read more…]
Summer Reading – Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion
Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton, Pantheon Books (Random House), New York, 2012
Hey, all you enlightened people– for summer reading, check out this author, Alain de Botton, and his latest book, Religion for Atheists. Funny, provocative, insightful, engaging, even “cool,” de Botton is everything you could want in a rising new-age philosopher from London via Oxford and Switzerland.
Euro-intello, yes, but he probably wishes he were a surfer dude. Who doesn’t? Don’t worry about stumbling over some of the vocabulary; it’s just for fun (but go ahead and look up that word, you’ll learn something) or you can just read the pictures, pictures on every page. [Read more…]
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