Saturday, August 25, 2018

The Art of the Stroll / Highbrow Lingerie

Old age creeps on us ere we think it nigh
— John Dryden, born in 1631


Is your dream version of yourself a drily witty, slightly abrasive woman in a black turtleneck reading Sontag, Didion, and Arendt? This is the book for you Children of The Velvet Revolution  

 Paul Davis On Crime: Happy 88th Birthday To Sean Connnery


Conversations Jaroslav Kovaricek: Listen Living the Prague Spring


*Time for a shiny new look for Captain Cook

This weekend marks the 250th anniversary since Cook's voyage to Australia.

99 Inspirational Art Quotes from Famous Artists |


How meditation affects the brain to help you stress less
Meditation and yoga affect the brain's stress response system to help us feel more relaxed. They can even lower our blood pressure


BuzzFeedNews: “Italian photographerMassimo Listri has spent his career capturing some of the most magnificent and unexpected interiors in the world. His signature style of large-scale and highly detailed pictures is most often shot without a single person in the frame, allowing viewers to fully immerse themselves within the magnitude of details that each space offers. For his new book,The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries, Listri has traveled the world to capture the interiors of 55 libraries in 16 countries — places that the artist describes as “cathedrals of knowledge.”

MIE: art museum highbrow lingerie

Are there people who are reading fifty books at once sort of?

The Death of the Book Through the Ages - The New York Times

Hannah Natanson retweetedWashington PostWashington Post
Aug 20
Death of the Book: Yes, teens are texting and using social media instead of reading books, researchers say 
   


NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Scientist Explains Why Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others


The “remarkable” (Washington Post), “soul-affirming” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (Vice), premise of Nanette is that comedy cannot tell the full truth, that the full truth is too difficult for audiences to handle. Gadsby spends the first half hour of the show telling milquetoast jokes about being a lesbian, and then dives into a dissection of men (they’re loud and abusive and overly sensitive to critique), art (Picasso was bad and a child predator (true)), and comedy itself.
Comedy, Gadsby says, cannot hold her trauma — and so she spends the last half of her show explicating her trauma, saying that she actually cut off a true story at the halfway point earlier in the set, because in truth it ended with her being beaten up for being gay, and that no one would laugh at that. Comedy is at its best when it helps audiences understand their relationship to trauma, not when it makes them feel comfortably woke







How Poetry Constructs A Way Of Navigating The World


“In my view, poetry is the most organic art form; it does not require money or physical labor. A poem doesn’t need to follow any particular grammar rules; it is the record of one’s own experience of the singular mind and/or body, a singular voice. For many of us, it is also a way of “being in the world,” a world that in many ways was not made for us and actively resists our participation. Through poetry, we are able to remake and reinvent that world.”









As Streaming For All Media Grows, Physical Books Are Holding Their Own


The oldest form of physical media is actually holding up quite well. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018–2022, the consumer market for physical, printed books is holding its own in an increasingly digital world (see “Print Presses On”). Between 2018 and 2022, sales of physical video games, home video, and music are expected to decline each year, in some instances by double-digit percentages. By contrast, sales of physical books are expected to grow modestly, by about 1 percent annually, every year.


The Art of the Stroll | The American Conservative
Walking is a slow and porous experience. The words we use to describe it—meandering, sauntering, strolling—have their own leisurely and gentle cadence and suggest a sort of unhurried enjoyment. But to walk is also to be vulnerable: it forces us into physical interaction with surrounding streets, homes, and people. This can delay us, annoy us, even put us in danger. But it connects us to community in a way that cars never can.

cold creek reviewEver stuck your foot or hand into ice cold water and held it there, feeling the numbness of the aftershock? How about the whacky idea of a polar plunge – your whole body into an icy lake – can you imagine what that must feel like? Believe it or not, that’s the exact sensation the editors of Cold Creek Review were going for when they named their online publication. “We wanted to focus on literature and art that makes you feel paralyzed,” Editor-in-Chief for Poetry and Nonfiction Amber D. Tran tells me. “We imagine reading and reviewing our featured pieces leaves you with a sense of frozen time, like you were being submerged in a body of ice-cold water.”



ElizabethCohenIn her Editor's Notes to Issue 13 of Saranac Review, Elizabeth Cohen begins by quoting Emily Dickinson: "If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Cohen writes, "We are sometimes asked at Saranac Review  how we select the work we publish, and I think Dickinson's words are applicable. Of course we seek work that has strong voice, craft and originality, but in the end, it is the visceral response that probably most informs our choices. We choose poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and plays that make us feel and evoke in us a response that physically affects us, while simultaneously reminding us why we read in the first place. If you could read our notes to one another on Submittable, you would see a lot of this: 'Made me tingle,' 'heart stopping,' 'took my breath away.'"

With such discerning criteria, writers have got to meet that bar, providing readers much to look forward to in each issue of Saranac Review.

river teethThe cover image of the fall 2017 issue of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative is a gorgeous waterfall photo from White Mountains, N.H. by David FitzSimmons.


university of iowa press 2017 fiction winnersThe University of Iowa Press published the winners of the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award and the 2017 John Simmons Short Fiction Award last month.

Matthew Lansburgh’s Outside is the Ocean, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, was chosen by Andre Dubus III, who calls the linked collection “mesmerizing” as it “explores, among other things, the tenuous tie between mother and son, between the Old World and the New, between what was and what is.”

Winner of the John Simons Short Fiction Award, What Counts as Love by Marian Crotty, is “sensual, brave, and wonderfully evocative” as Crotty  examines“the seemingly tattered nature of love, taking us deeply into the varied lives of her characters and making us care for them all.” The nine stories follow people—most often young women—searching for human connection, their stories touching on themes of addiction, class, sexuality, and gender.

12 Things all Starving Artists Believe



7 Mistakes That Are Keeping Starving Artists From Thriving