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We lost two literary titans this week.

You know how they say things come in threes? ...

I'm not implying anything, but watch your back, Margaret Atwood!


Adrienne Rich is one of my favorite poets ever. I actually wrote a UC post about her once. She passed away yesterday at the age of 82. Here is a link to my friend Rachel McKeon reading one of her poems. RIP. 


THEN, just when I thought we were out of the literary graveyard, we were not, as just today the writer Harry Crews died as well. I highly recommend you google him and read some of his shit because it's crazy, in a Charles Bukowski-meets-Flannery-O-Connor-in-a-brothel kind of way.


so. RIP, I suppose? It's a sad week for the American literary community, that's for sure.


last but not least: upcoming events on the Useless Critic


- LizRo and I are finishing our review of the Hunger Games.
- I have two writers lined up for writer's page!
- possible more interviews 
- Al is in Africa so you'll have to bear with me. I'm busy and without internet, mostly. ha, Al in Africa, could be a movie. 


I leave you with a poem:





I
When my dreams showed signs 

of becoming 

politically correct 
no unruly images 
escaping beyond borders 
when walking in the street I found my 
themes cut out for me 
knew what I would not report 
for fear of enemies' usage 
then I began to wonder


II
Everything we write 

will be used against us 

or against those we love. 
These are the terms, 
take them or leave them. 
Poetry never stood a chance 
of standing outside history. 
One line typed twenty years ago 
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint 
to glorify art as detachment 
or torture of those we 
did not love but also 
did not want to kill.

We move but our words stand 

become responsibly 

for more than we intended

and this is verbal privilege

VII
I am thinking this in a country 

where words are stolen out of mouths 

as bread is stolen out of mouths 
where poets don't go to jail 
for being poets, but for being 
dark-skinned, female, poor. 
I am writing this in a time 
when anything we write 
can be used against those we love 
where the context is never given 
though we try to explain, over and over 
For the sake of poetry at least 
I need to know these things

- Adrienne Rich
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