Thursday, July 7, 2011

Art and the Metrocard

Frida Kahlo




"For the past 10 years, New-York-based Guatemalan artist Juan Carlos Pinto has been using discarded Metrocards to create vibrant mosaic portraits of cultural icons and local heroes alike. His artwork comments on issues of social justice and environmental conservation with a visual aesthetic that emanates the expressive lushness of the ancient Mayan folklore traditions of his homeland."


Read/see more here



House of Books

 

So cool. A house made entirely of book shelves! Read more about this glorious house here


Poetry Northwest Needs Your Votes!



The Pitch, a quarterly, online writing contest thrown by Poetry Northwest, has posted their finalists––and Jane Wong is one of them! Go check her out, gauge her competition, and send her your vote!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

"Intermediate" Gatsby?


Seriously??!! A new "Intermediate" Great Gatsby? How much less can we expect from our education system? How can we appreciate the poetry of writer's word choices if words are to be dumbed down to an expressionless style?

Roger Ebert writes: "There is no purpose in "reading" The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he choose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all. You have been imprisoned in an educational system that cheats and insults you by inflicting a barbaric dumbing-down process. You are left with the impression of having read a book, and may never feel you need return for a closer look."

Agreed. Read more here.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Strange, Beautiful, Subterranean Power of Fairy Tales

Illustration by Nicoletta Ceccoli


Flying House friend, Kate Bernheimer, moderates a Fairy Tale forum @The Center for Fiction. Keep it coming, Kate.


Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Orange Prize & Ruth Fowler

Yikes. I read this article over a week ago and forgot to post it until now. Talk about harsh.

"I'd rather pluck my own pubic hairs than read this fawning idiocy written by fools..."

Ruth Fowler is not too keen on MFA Creative Writing programs, nor the "bland" writers who graduate from them.

"The Creative Writing MFA is the singularly most devastating occurrence to hit literature in the 20th century, churning out writers of utterly indistinguishable competence."

Just read it. It's short. Your jaw will drop.


Book Covers That Got Away

Designing book covers was my dream job coming out of college. Maybe it still is––if I only had to do it part time, of course. Here are a few samples of book covers that were never quite produced:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/15/books/review/15covers-gallery.html