Lit Hub Weekly: October 11-14, 2022

• Robert Pinsky reflects on poetry and social class, and outgrowing his “dissenting first impression” of Robert Lowell. | Lit Hub Poetry

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• “In my most cynical moments, I wonder if the return to literary moralism isn’t an evolutionary tactic of publishing’s extant power structures.” A. Natasha Joukovsky against the moral-medicine view of fiction. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “I still have to run, no matter how hard I try to choose synonyms, or search for euphemisms or sophisticated wordings to avoid the word refugee.” A letter from Ukrainian writer and poet Kateryna Babkina (tr. Hanna Leliv). | Lit Hub Ukraine

• “I knew I didn’t know what I was doing, the monks knew I didn’t know what I was doing, and so, who was this performance for?” E.M. Tran on culture and ritual at her father’s funeral. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Leonard Cohen’s A Ballet of Lepers, Lydia Millet’s Dinosaurs, and Andrew Miller’s The Slowworm’s Song all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• These books prove we’re living in a golden age of horror. | CrimeReads

• “Publishing had managed to turn its terminal failure into a market opportunity.” Ismail Muhammad on contemporary Black literature and the representation trap. | The New York Times Magazine

• “I will always love the comics medium but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable.” An interview with Watchmen author Alan Moore. | The Guardian

• “After Craig filled the tank, a young man, wrapped in a sleeping bag and dripping wet, politely asked for a ride to Iowa City.” Ted Geltner on the car crash that inspired a Denis Johnson story. | The New Yorker

• Jordan Pruett asks: What counts as a bestseller? | Public Books

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• Read a new poem by Raven Leilani. | Astra Magazine

• Dan Kois explores the legacy of Rod McKuen, “the most popular poet in American publishing history”—now all but forgotten. | Slate

• Behind the scenes of the long-running podcast All About Agatha, whose hosts set out to read and rank every Agatha Christie novel. | Los Angeles Times

• From Bernardine Evaristo, a guide to reading your way through London. | The New York Times

• What are the best books for teaching children about the climate crisis? | TIME

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• “In these masochistic novels, desire is a sort of black hole, which by its nature, must always suck and always swallow.” Noor Qasim on Annie Ernaux and contemporary stories of desire. | The Drift

• “Maybe we need a Disappearing Libraries Week.” Katha Pollitt on school libraries’ need for more support. | The Nation

• “Our fates are merely two drops in an ocean filled with stories of war, shattered families, and displacement.” Kurdish activists Ala Riani and Rezan Labady address the story of Iranian Kurds. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Fatimah Ashgar on poetry, directing, and being daring: “What happens when individuals actually listen to their bodies rather than impose their own wills over it?” | PEN America

• Five debut authors over 50 share their stories. | Poets & Writers

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• Attention, writers! A round-up of fall/winter 2022-2023 fellowships and residencies to apply to. | BOMB

Also on Lit Hub:

Jacqueline Woodson, Helen Phillips, and more contemporary writers reflect on 75 years of Goodnight Moon • Lydia Millet on long extinct creatures and boundaries real and imaginary • Antony Beevor on the Red Army’s campaign of terror • On Black Panther, Luke Cage, and the responsibility of Black superheroes • Deborah E. Kennedy on how being broke made her a writer • The feminist history of science fiction • Reine Arcache Melvin on writing sex and violence • On the complementary pursuits of writing and homesteading • On the patriarchy beneath the possession in The Exorcist • The trailblazing illustrator and mountaineer who captured North America’s wildflowers • Nora McInerny reflects on the hijacking nature of anxiety • Vanessa A. Bee in praise of spite writing • Arwen Donahue on the doubts left behind by sudden death • On the waning years of Edward Hopper • “While the classical industry may have been designed with snobs in mind, classical music was not.” • The price of resisting Nazi propaganda in Germany • Transcendence and immanence in the work of Victoria Chang and Yusef Komunyakaa • What a young Charles Darwin saw upon anchoring in Tahiti • Peter Orner on murder and tragedy in Fall River, Massachusetts • Mary L. Dudziak on resisting the brutality of state numbers • On Italo Calvino, Anne Carson, and “the roiling mess” of romantic love