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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