Cover to Cover: Murdaland
This is the cover of their very first issue. The new one's cover is even cooler.
I took the most recent- and only the second ever- issue of Murdaland Magazine with me on my vacation a month or so ago (it seems like a lifetime ago) and read most it with great pleasure. I just finished reading the rest of it today. The cover here on the left is of the first issue. The magazine is based in Pittsburgh, which makes me love them. This is noir, crime, fucked up stuff, with a little Jayne Anne Phillips thrown in (Mary Gaitskill was in their first issue) and a very interesting non-fiction thing from a soldier in the Middle East. The new issue’s cover is even more badass than this one here, but I couldn’t figure a way to put it in the post. After the jump, I’ll briefly summarize the stories:
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April 23rd, 2009 / 8:31 pm
April 23rd, 2009 / 8:31 pm
Giardiasis: Science Writing Can Be Fun
My husband got these little critters in Russia
Ryan is going to Russia. Which made me think of Giardiasis. Some Dutch dude wrote this about the parasite now known as Giardiasis (thanks Wikipedia). I think it is a beautiful description of the inside of certain kinds of shit and a wonderful example of how science writing, as Nabakov, Adrian (not to mention science fiction writers) and many others knew and know, can be great:
Antony van Leeuwenhoek of Delft, Netherlands, described such microorganisms he observed in the stool: “I have sometimes also seen tiny creatures moving very prettily; some of them a bit bigger, others a bit less, than a blood-globule but all of one and the same make. Their bodies were somewhat longer than broad, and their belly, which was flattish, furnished with sundry little paws, wherewith they made such a stir in the clear medium and among the globules, that you might even fancy you saw a woodlouse running up against a wall; and albeit they made a quick motion with their paws, yet for all that they made but slow progress.”
Three Mini-Chapbooks from Mud Luscious Press Arrive Today
Three mini-chapbooks from Mud Luscious Press arrived today (link here to JA Tyler’s ml press), consisting of “Isn’t This What You Were Looking For?” by Ken Sparling, “Molting” by Aaron Burch and “Those Bones” by David Ohle. Excerpts after the jump:
Similes, Metaphor, a Pushcart Prize Winning Poem and Mary Gaitskill
And she's hot!
It’s raining in Monte Carlo and so my plans to watch taped tennis all afternoon are shattered, shattered like the broken heart I have today to begin with. (It will be mended as soon as my husband comes home this evening and says, “everthing will be fine”.) The discussion on how many adverbs or similes or anything a writer should use made me think of this poem. Now, I do understand that fiction is not poetry (sorry Blake, that’s my opinion) and I understand that the agent who was sharing these rules did so out of a sort of kindness toward writers. That said, I love similes- even awkward ones, maybe especially awkward ones, like in the poem “Love In The Orangery” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (who you can find out more about linked here). I also love the miracles that happen in The End of the Affair and cancer stories. READ MORE >
Malcolm Lowry’s Letters
Malcolm Lowry’s letters interest me more than his fiction (I don’t have this edition linked here, I have an earlier one). I’m not sure why that is, but hey, it’s just how it is. Here’s one of them:
Sylvia Plath’s Son Kills Himself
Easter Post
Richard Yates, The Easter Parade (with a link to Tolstoy’s The Resurrection)
A Better Resurrection by Syliva Plath
I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.
And from The Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St. John, chapter 20, verses 24-31, from the Douay-Rheims New Testament (thanks Barry, for suggesting this version of the New Testament): READ MORE >
New Used Bookstore on Smith Street
I walked into this new used bookstore on Smith Street in Brooklyn after carbo-loading last night for a 10k race I was supposed to run right now in Central Park that I am skipping- last minute skipping- because it’s raining and freezing out and getting pneumonia is not worth it! As you can imagine, I am a bit disappointed and thinking things like, what if it stops raining??!! Anyway, I spent 25 dollars last night and bought a bunch of books. Here are the titles:
