If you asked a hundred contemporary poets working today to define what they meant by poetry you would find yourself orbiting a hundred differing, often conflicting definitions. - The Point
Not even great poets can live off their poetry — “The Waste Land” sold only about 330 copies in its first six months — so Eliot, from the mid-1920s on, worked as a director of a new publishing firm called Faber & Faber. - Washington Post
How refreshing it was to see the Booker prize take another turn last month – putting the short in shortlist, as it were – with a record-breakingly succinct nominee: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is just 116 pages. The Spectator
"Rod McKuen sold millions of poetry books in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a regular on late-night TV. He released dozens of albums, wrote songs for Sinatra, and was nominated for two Oscars." (He was also an astounding liar.) How did he disappear from the culture so completely? - Slate
The bookshop, which opened in 2019, was in its infancy as a business when it was forced to close during Covid lockdowns. It managed to stay afloat, but Mrs Fridd feared the cost of living crisis could become "the straw that broke the camel's back". - BBC
“I started to be a witness to events. This is a primal function of art … More talented writers of the next generations will take this raw material and make a beautiful novel about it. But being in the centre of the hurricane you just try to grab the tiniest moments of your grief.” - The Guardian
"I wonder if the fact that Elvis relies on biographical research rather than a novel made it the more successful film for me (and most critics). ... Is the problem with Blonde, Blonde?" - LitHub
Yes, BookTok. But not only BookTok. The woman who self-published her first book while she was earning $9 an hour and whose books outsold the Bible in 2021 says, "It's not me ... The readers are controlling what is selling right now." - The New York Times
"Understanding whether or not Japanese literature is changing also requires defining 'Japanese literature,' and defining the 'Japanese' part of the term is challenging enough. Does writing in other languages by diaspora Japanese qualify? Or writing by non-ethnically Japanese writers living in Japan in Japanese, or other languages?" - Metropolis (Japan)
"Count Dracula — a recluse plagued by yearning, a macabre flair for theatrics and existential loneliness — turned out to be an unlikely patron saint for the uncertain times. ... Serialization made the 125-year-old novel more accessible and created a community of readers when many were looking for connection." - The New York Times
"Ernaux, 82, started out writing autobiographical novels, but quickly abandoned fiction in favor of memoirs. Her more than 20 books, most very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents." - AP
The single most influential data in the publishing industry—which, every day, determines book contracts and authors’ lives—is basically inaccessible to anyone beyond the industry. And I learned that this is a big problem. - Public Books
To the eye of an American editor, sometimes the smallest hints of vulnerability, when they don’t service any big and explicit narrative, often end up looking like disposable details. - European Review of Books
This is what the censors refuse to grasp: Librarians are not trying to force your children to read material you don’t want them to read. They are fulfilling their role as information professionals tasked with upholding the constitutional promise of access to information for all. - Washington Post
