Lit Hub Daily: September 5, 2023

• “The more closely one scrutinizes The Lord of the Rings, the more extraordinarily metafictional it appears.” Nick Groom wonders, is Tolkien’s mediaevalist fantasy really a work of modernism? | Lit Hub Criticism

• 26 new books to kick off your September. | The Hub

• “A handmade book, a sensual object.” Kathleen B. Jones on the beauty of physical encounters with rare books. | Lit Hub

• Elaine Equi considers how reading and writing poetry puts us in touch with something bigger than ourselves. | Lit Hub Poetry

• James Hanaham talks to Kwaneta Harris, a writer who’s been in solitary confinement for over seven years, about incarceration, representation in literature, carceral censorship, and more. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• Edith Grossman, translator of Cervantes and García Márquez, among others, has died at 87. | The New York Times

• A letter from Ernest Hemingway to his lawyer, detailing his injuries from two plane crashes in as many days, has sold at auction for $237,055. | NPR

• “Amid the misfires alpha male nationalism engendered, some of the poems radiate a power that has grown over time.” Esther Allen revisits Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton’s Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle. | Poetry

• Can artificial intelligence allow us to speak to other species? Elizabeth Kolbert explores the possibilities. | The New Yorker

• “It is in part the directness and mercilessness of her texts that have made her controversial.” Gunnhild Øyehaug on Sharon Olds. | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub: Nine essential books about the American frontier • New poetry from Mary Jo Bang • Read from Sheena Patel’s debut novel, I’m a Fan