Has anyone ever actually gotten laid at AWP?

I’m sure I’ll regret asking, but I’m curious as to what people think/thought of the idea of the Occupy Wall Street Library?

The Sakura Review is looking for work. It’s a really beautifully made journal. Check it out.

I usually like seeing text and ideas stolen and incorporated in new texts. Often there is a clear intent, or the layering makes it interesting, even if more often you maybe don’t realize it was stolen. Though when students do it for papers it can seem like laziness, and often really is. Little, Brown just killed a “suspense” novel that they realized stole direct language from lots of classic mysteries, unacknowledged, including major stuff like Bond. Are there limits to acceptable “plagiarism”? What are they?

Amazing!

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Well this last line from John Banville’s review of Joan Didion’s new memoir Blue Nights, I like it:

“However, it is most profound, and most provocative, at another level, the level at which the author comes fully to realize, and to face squarely, the dismaying fact that against life’s worst onslaughts nothing avails, not even art; especially not art.”

The excellent Peter Mendelsund posted the first part of a five part essay on jacketing works of fiction.

Let’s say someone cares enough about you to write your biography. Title it: this is fantasy anyway, so why not have fun?

I suck at making money. I go for long periods of time without showering. I’m self-involved to the point of megalomania. I talk shit to myself about myself. I feel like I need drugs. I feel my poems have  more to offer than my personality. My work seems like a series of mistakes played out over the course of many years for everyone to observe. I turn my feelings into products. I have a strong need to be praised for my work, which I cannot explain. My poems have no ostensible value beyond their capacity to conduct oblique messages, which I have no control over. 

Why are you ashamed of being a writer?

Melville House site redo. What do you think? To me, their last site was a model of amazeballs. So much PHP. This one is cleaner? I dunno, but I’m about to explore it and find out.