roundup

by Jane Ciabattari | Aug-26-2009

Morris Dickstein explains that the title of his new book does not come from a Bruce Springsteen song.

John Freeman wonders if we should slow down…“The boundlessness of the Internet always runs into the hard fact of our animal nature, our physical limits, the dimensions of our cognitive present, the overheated capac­ity of our minds.”

Scott Esposito has launched a blog for the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco.

Helen Conkling’s “snake” poem.

Eliza Griswold’s Kabul poem on “The Writer’s Almanac.”

Daniel Nestor reveals his writing space.

Billy Collins talks about his random reading these days and why “transparency” has no place in poetry.

Gregg Barrios talks about how his play “Rancho Pancho” got published.

Jason Berry celebrating the publication of “Up From the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since World War II,” with a new last chapter about music after Katrina.

Jack Shafer looks back to another time when newspapers were under seige—the coming of radio in the thirties.

Marty Beckerman retracts a snarky, jealous 2002 New York Press review he wrote about Nick McDonell.

Is the digital transition harder for trade publishers than other publishers? Mike Shatzkin has an answer.

Benjamin Moser talks to Paper Cuts about the challenges and pleasures of writing a biography about a woman who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf.

Another, unkinder Paper Cuts tracks the layoffs and buyouts at US newspapers in 2009.