Your favorite story, poem, or essay...

What's your favorite story, poem, or essay? Something you go back to reread again and again, or a work that lingers over time. If you have a list, that's fine, too. I have readers from all over the world; I'd love to know what some of your favorites are...I'm curious.  If you can tell me why the work appeals to you, that would be great. You can let me know right here, or send me an email:

therese@thereseflanagan.com

 

Thanks!

What I'm listening to...

Poetry off the Shelf - (from the website at The Poetry Foundation / Chicago, IL):

 

"Producer Curtis Fox explores the diverse world of contemporary American poetry with readings by poets, interviews with critics, and short poetry documentaries. Nothing is off limits, and nobody is taken too seriously."
Schedule: Weekly

Valentine's Day

I'm following #litpickuplines on Twitter...some of them are pretty good. I couldn't help but add a couple of my own for the day. Marilyn Hacker's poem, Nearly a Valediction came to mind: "You happened to me."

The Poetry Foundation is celebrating the day with love poems.

 

The Valentine's Day Google doodle was created by the husband of an online friend. It's wonderful:

 

The backstory on the Valentine's Day Google Doodle from boingboing. 

 

Slate has love stories told in three photos.

 

 

What I'm listening to...Frank Delaney's RE:Joyce

If you've read James Joyce's Ulysses, or if you've thought about it, you should listen to Frank Delaney's story of the story -- explication is too dry a word for what Mr. Delaney delivers -- given in 5-10 minute episodes. It's like having a rollicking tour guide who is filled not only with the facts, but the means of telling you what you didn't know you wanted to hear. That's the gift of gab! 

Frank Delaney, born in Ireland, and now living in the US, is an award winning author and a broadcaster. You'll be taken in by his rich voice. Don't stop to do the math on this series...you'll be engaged for the next two decades...and what an engagement it is! 

 

RE:Joyce

 

King of the Hill -- AMAZON

The NYT article this past Sunday, The Bookstore's Last Stand , makes note of the disappearing bookshelves, now that Borders is gone, leaving Barnes & Noble as the only bricks and mortar chain with some storefront presence in many communities throughout the US. There is no mystery to the disappearance.  We are all online now; we like to read; we have limited time and budgets. Amazon has made it easy to click and receive, at a great discount. They gain market share by making books a loss leader. It's a tried and true business practice. Barnes & Noble finds itself on the ropes, as the world of books and book delivery systems are being upset by one giant player. Amazon takes the role of King of the Hill in this iteration. Google looms not far behind. Not too long ago, the Kings were Borders, and Barnes & Noble, and it was the small bookstores that were obliterated by the new rules of the game. There is no mercy in commerce. With Kindles and Nooks in hand, there is no need to move from a favorite reading chair, proving, as if proof were needed, that a body at rest stays at rest. My book comes to me via Amazon's Whispernet.  A whisper is the delivery system of secrets. What's not being whispered, but roared, from the top of the hill: The times are changing, changing utterly, for everyone making a living with books.

What's a writer and a reader to do? I don't really know, just yet. This change feels chaotic and momentous to me. I own a Kindle Fire, an i-Pod Touch, an Android phone, and shelf upon shelf of books. I read.  I have a novel, soon ready to launch, and I hesitate. I hesitate for real reasons. Much like waiting for a hurricane to pass, I hunker down and continue to write, and rewrite, waiting for the storm clouds to pass. I understand that this may be the new pace; I will create my own outpost. This is it.

I hear all sorts of arguments about efficiencies of the marketplace and new technologies and how there's no stopping progress. Of course not. I spend half of my day on a computer. I would not want to be without an internet connection, and I have a harder time, with each passing day, trying to remember what it was like not being connected to everything. And yet...

The acquisition and distribution of books has always been more than a commodity driven enterprise. It's always been about ideas and hunches and emotions and creativity and collaboration and presentation and wooing and the storytelling. I've been fortunate enough to meet a few souls on the inside of the publishing world -- people motivated by the love of the book. Their world is being rocked right now. Agents are scrambling, trying to figure out the best way to negotiate these shoals for their stable of authors; editors are given less authority and more work, with little job security; the need for quarterly profits determines what readers will see on the shelves that are dwindling. Amazon morphs from a client of the publishing world, to a super-sized competitor.

To the people in my life under the age of thirty, all of this seems like a no-brainer. Of course things have moved on-line; of course you should create your brand; sell your books; your photos; your content. I can get caught up in their enthusiasm for the new frontier, but I think of all of the voices that aren't capable of the sustained sale's pitch, the look-look-look at me posturing that will be required to be noticed at all, as we dismantle, with speed and little regard, the network of hands that nurtured books into being.

 

Wislawa Szymborska

 

Wislawa Szymborska, Poet     1923-2012

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/02/a-sad-day-wislawa-szymborska-1923-2012/

There are some poetic voices that stay with you, voices you return to again and again, as to a main source. Wislawa Szymborska is one of those voices.

 

Some of her poems:

 

Miracle Fair 

 

A Few Words on the Soul

 

The Three Oddest Words

 

On Death, without Exaggeration

What I'm reading...

 

*Book Business - Publishing Past, Present, and Future, by Jason Epstein

http://amzn.com/B004ZJG3ZI

_________________________________ 

 

*The Shatzkin Files by Mike Shatzkin -

You can read this, blog post by blog post, on Shatzkin's site, but I preferred to have it in an e-book format on my Kindle.

http://amzn.com/B0057CXB48

______________________________

 

*Vanity Fair's: How a Book is Born (The Making of The Art of Fielding) by Graydon Carter and Keith Gessen

This is a behind the scenes look at the current state of affairs in publishing, and a particular look at the acquisition of The Art of Fielding and what goes into the making of a best seller.

http://amzn.com/B005LEWYYU

Nikky Finney - Head Off & Split - 2011 National Book Award Poetry Winner

I've heard from some friends that the Vimeo version of Nikky Finney's speech doesn't work for them, so I am posting the YouTube version, too, because this speech is too good to miss.

 

There was such elegance and power in her delivery: the emotion almost spilling over, but contained; the narrative grounding in the law -- the law to silence, will full authority invested; her honoring those who helped her along the way, keeping the promise to the girl poet she was, to name those who helped her if her name was ever called out; to fill the speech with such thanks, to be full witness, and to end it with a silence fully owned. Amazing, that.