Lit Hub Daily: February 23, 2022

• How nonsense, puns, and dirty limericks make possible poetry’s “extraordinary concision.” | Lit Hub Poetry

  Article continues after advertisement

• Why Ed Simon mentally crosses his fingers when saying, “Of course, I don’t think that demons are actually real.” | Lit Hub

• The man who foretold extinction by technology… and became the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. | Lit Hub Tech

• “The border is everywhere.” Patrick Strickland on the very real dangers of artificial borders. | Lit Hub Politics

• How much was WWI about… bread? | Lit Hub History

  Article continues after advertisement

• Translating the extreme consciousness: Kathleen J. Woods considers what pornographic literature shows us about human nature. | Lit Hub

• “Could Joyce really be saying that a specter is haunting Dedalus—the specter of gay thoughts?” Paul McAdory on subtext and belief. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Patrick Strickland with a brief history of xenophobia in America. | CrimeReads

• “Alas, who among translators has not wanted, at least on occasion, to get into a proper argument with their author?” Juana Adcock illustrates scenes from the life of a translator. | Poetry Foundation

• Rob Latham considers the luminous—and quintessentially 1960s—fictions of Jane Gaskell. | Los Angeles Review of Books

  Article continues after advertisement

• These children’s books have been in print the longest. | Book Riot

• A book of short stories written by Afghan women was published after reading through hundreds of submissions from around the country. | The Guardian

• Stephanie Stokes Oliver discusses the legacy, and political implications, of fashion during the Civil Rights Movement. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Adam Rubin, of Dragons Love Tacos fame, is inviting kids to send him their own ice-cream-themed stories. | NPR

• “Jesus said, ‘Take no thought for the morrow,’ which I take to mean that if we do the right things today, we’ll have done all we really can for tomorrow.” Dorothy Wickenden profiles Wendell Barry. | The New Yorker

  Article continues after advertisement

Also on Lit Hub: 20 new books to dive into this week • Jonathan Russell Clark on aging alongside the Jackass dudes • Read from Quan Berry’s latest novel, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East