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:

North American Time

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