The poet is a human being. I don’t have any more or less emotion than anybody else, but I have access to my feelings because they matter so much in the structure of the poem.
In the process of writing your book, what did you discover, what, if anything, surprised you?
Sy Montgomery (author of The Soul of an Octopus): In the process of writing this book, I was surprised at every turn: that octopuses taste with their skin. That most of their neurons are not in the brains, but in their arms. That their touch–one that many naturalists I admire found repulsive–was so soft, and that their suckers–dextrous enough to untie knots in surgical silk, and strong enough that just one sucker might lift 30 pounds–were capable of great tenderness. But what surprised me most was that a creature so unlike us was clearly capable of forming bonds with humans, and that my relationships with each individual octopus changed forever the way I understand what it means to think, to feel and to know.
Today is Shel Silverstein’s birthday. Celebrate by learning 6 facts about the beloved poet who would have turned 84 today.
Read Sandra Lim’s interview with Fred Moten, whose poetry collection, The Feel Trio, is a Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Read our interview with celebrated poet Fanny Howe at nationalbook.org. Her latest collection of poems, Second Childhood, is a Finalist for the National Book Award.
John Ashbery is our T. S. Eliot, our Gertrude Stein. It’s vital that his work be authoritatively available in as many different formats as possible.
Our last #poetrygram for #NationalPoetryMonth is dedicated to the late beloved #poet Lucille Clifton, who won the #NBAward in 2000 for her collection of #poems Blessing the Boats. Clifton’s poems drew from her personal experiences as an African-American woman who came of age in the era of Jim Crow segregation. On our blog dedicated to the Winners of the #NBAward for #Poetry, poet and BookUpNYC instructor John Murillo praises Clifton’s “terse, clipped lines” meant to– in Clifton’s words– “comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.” Murillo writes: “She knew a thing or two about life and mortality, about this world and its cruelties, and she wrote from the heart of it. Here is a wisdom without pretense, a voice we can trust because we know she won’t lie about what she’s seen.”
A handful of poets have been twice-honored with #NBAwards for Poetry, but Alan Dugan is the only poet to be honored for both his first and last collections of #poetry. His first collection, simply titled Poems, won the #NBAward for Poetry in 1962, as well as many other honors. His last collection, Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, published at age 78, won the #NBAward in 2001. Writing for our blog dedicated to the Winners of the #NBAward for Poetry, poet and critic Katie Peterson says Dugan’s poem are often described as “tough talking” and “urban.” But if Dugan’s poems are hard on others as well as himself ( “an aging phony, stale, woozy, and corrupt /from unattempted dreams and bad health habits.”), the pain is worth the pleasure. Dugan, says Peterson,“writes love poems where intimacy has all the brutality and wordlessness of animal instinct…His lines are tense and govern expectation by making you so pleasurably anxious you feel compelled to continue to read.”
Robert Penn Warren, who won the 1958 #NBAward for #Poetry, was also the nation’s first Poet Laureate, an annual appointment by the #Librarian of the U.S. Congress to raise appreciation of the writing and reading of #poetry. After receiving the #NBAward, Warren published an excerpt of his acceptance speech in the Saturday Review in an essay titled “Formula for a Poem.” Warren wrote: “Making a poem is, for the writer, a way of trying to understand experience…” On our blog dedicated to #NBAward-Winning Poets , author Kiki Petrosino writes that Warren’s #NBAward-Winning collection, Promises, “is a magnetic collection that shows us what can happen when a poet is minutely, joyfully attentive to subject. Indeed, Warren teaches us that issues of ‘what’ can be just as crucial as 'whom.’”
In 1999, Ai Ogawa, whose first name means “love” in Japanese, became the first woman of color to win a National Book Award for #Poetry. Vice, Ai’s Award-Winning collection, tackled some of humanity’s most disturbing behaviors– from bigotry and prejudice to rape and murder. On our poetry blog, the poet Dilruba Ahmed writes: “Ai’s poems blur and complicate the boundaries between the culprit and the innocent, the culpable and the blameless.”
alwaysbringabookwithyou
all-these-paperback-dreams
Barnes and Nobles is gonna start serving food and alcohol.
Everybody’s cracking jokes about how it’s a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the age of Amazon.
But you know what? Props to them. This is exactly what Blockbuster didn’t do. At no point was Blockbuster like “Hey, movie rentals aren’t the lucrative enterprise they once were. Perhaps it’s time we become known for our cheesy garlic bread.”
that’s a fantastic plan, honestly? i would 100% go sit at a bookshop, buy a glass of wine, and pick up the newest biography. 50/50 i’d decide to buy it after a couple chapters, and even if i don’t, that’s still money i spent at B&N!
They could host book clubs with food and drinks where one of the employees shares their experiences with a book of their choice and tries to convince the guests to buy it.
Barnes and noble realizing the only reason people go to brick and mortar stores is for the experience and access to an enjoyable physical space they can socialize in (sure isnt for the price) and capitalizing on that is a stroke of genius and a really refreshing approach to the dilemma of competing with online stores
