Greetings & apologies for the recent lack of content on my part (assuming anyone’s even missed me)—I’ve been wrapped up with writing a new book, and with teaching. But in a desperate attempt to stay current I’ll contribute the following vital question: uh, what’s your favorite color? Mine is blue.

Here’s this interesting thing about some people who sent letters to the editors of Vanity Fair and People. (I remember reading one of them very clearly: the Michelle Price one on VF.)

DO YOU USUALLY READ ‘LETTERS TO THE EDITOR?’ DO YOU EVER WRITE THEM?

“It’s time to kill the idea that Amazon is killing independent bookstores.”

This post is rather thin on evidence to claim it’s killing anything, but — while I am mostly agnostic on Amazon’s effects — it is undeniable that Amazon has made reading a much easier habit for many people, and I suspect this leads to more reading in general, not only more reading through Amazon.

are you bummed?

“We met at AWP. Can I email you my short stories?” 30 Awkward Moments From Your Creative Writing MFA. Yep.

“Here, the obsolete game-as-medium lights its fires with the levity of camp. Its “new aesthetic” texture makes a tragicomic figure for contemporary poetry: an anachronistic genre of gaming while Rome burns—or dreaming Rome might burn, while in fact the empire goes on using stuff up outside as usual, pleasant or painful, awful but cheerful, the deflector shield quite operational when your friends arrive.” — David Gorin at the Boston Review considers the perverse negativity of those crud-ducks over at Claudius App, whose reading this Saturday 9/21 @ 9PM @ Reena Spaulings with Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Ariana Reines,  and Keston Sutherland

you should definitely avoid, because just look at this animated GIF below they made for it that links directly to the Facebook event, which supposedly 118 people are going to, and look, I’ve been to Brooklyn, 118 people don’t even live in that pie shop, so, yeah, sure, keep murdering your brother, Claudius, it’s not like we don’t all know he’s the real king, and it’s not like we’re not going to keep putting slippers on your hands so you rub your eyes with your slippers when you wake up:

….even if you don’t help them give birth to Lenses (“a messy, caustic bunch. Inherently unclean, fibrillating, picking, shifting in and out of dark rooms”) you should definitely check out Jake and Barrett’s creepy, unnerving video

(click here)

a soft target

okay, so, Franzen’s been toasted again:

“Every woman must decide how not to sleep with Jonathan Franzen . . . how best to escape his sexual clutches if (she) ever encountered him on the path that led to the nearest market town” —

(from The Toast)

“for he shall be riding on a white steed, and his right hand will bear no glove. When you see him, you must rush at him, and throw your kirtle over him, and hold fast to him –”

(from The Toast)

But is it funny? In poor taste?

click here to read the “Toast” in full

You might have read about the golden age of online book clubs, but have you heard that those genius kids at APRIL in Seattle are starting their own book club? You should click here and read about it.

Sign up for $30 and get three sweet books in the mail over three months. Seattle folks: you can talk about the books with other attractive brains at the Frye Art Museum Cafe every month. You have to RSVP, so that’s important. The first book is our own Matthew Simmons’s excellent Happy Rock, and the meeting in Seattle is October 6th at 2PM.

Lovely first part of a conversation for your crisp Saturday between Peter Gizzi and Clark Coolidge, hosted by Flying Object on March 29th, 2013.

Highlights include:

prodigal geology; Aram Saroyan getting stoned and staring at the word “oxygen”; being hungry and new; getting to Heaven and everyone saying “Hey, not bad, kid”; the only composer who was at his centennial concert; writing sonnets without thinking about it; the imprints of giant poems; musical lifts; Robert Lowell stopping in the middle of a poem and going “And this is the important line”; losing words to your handwriting; riding signals; improvisational notebook sizes.