Recent Articles

April 7, 2009

National Poetry Month: Nathaniel Bellows 2

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Nathaniel Bellows is the author of the novel, On This Day, and a collection of poems, Why Speak?. A line of poetry by Nathaniel: “It takes youth to witness such desperation and read it / as joy…” At a recent reading in New England, I was asked two questions that stumped me. They shouldn’t have, [...]

April 7, 2009

Tonight on 4th Avenue 0

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Tonight’s installment of the Pacific Standard Fiction series in Brooklyn is a special “NYFA night,” featuring three 2008 fiction fellows of the New York Foundation for the Arts. They are: National Book Award-nominee Christine Schutt, author of All Souls; Guggenheim honoree Paul LaFarge, author of Haussmann, or The Distinction; and me. Drink specials will benefit [...]

April 6, 2009

Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music #3: Sidelined By Pete Doherty 1

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This isn’t the music post I’d planned on writing today. I was going to tell you all about the time a certain British guitar legend from the 60s shouted at me and a friend (yes, at us – specifically at us) across a packed hall in Greenwich Village eleven years ago. I was all set [...]

April 6, 2009

Modern Library Revue: #70 Alexandria Quartet (Two Durrells) 10

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The four novels (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea) which make up Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet share the #70 spot on the Modern Library list. For various reasons I lay down on the job and only read one of them, Justine, so I am not at all qualified to talk about the series. But I do have [...]

April 5, 2009

Curiosities: Dancing About Architecture 2

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Debut short story writer Matthew Vollmer gets some love. For those left baffled by descriptions of “the Purdie shuffle” in last week’s New Yorker and New York Times, the mighty Bernard “Pretty” Purdie offers a demonstration. At the International Edible Book Festival, you can chase down your Remembrance of Things Pasta with some Rosencrantz and [...]

April 3, 2009

National Poetry Month: Zach Savich 0

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Zach Savich’s first book of poems, Full Catastrophe Living, won the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize. He has recent work in Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, notnostrums, Bat City Review, and the anthology Best New Poets 2008. You can read an interview with him here. A line of poetry by Zach: “I am made of feelings and [...]