TODAY: In 1966, New Beacon Books, the first Caribbean publishing house in England, produces its first title, Foundations by Anthony (John) La Rose.
- “He was a deeply personal poet, the greatest poet of memory.” Dan Chiasson remembers John Ashbery, who died Sunday at 90. | The New Yorker
- “It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.” An excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power. | The Atlantic
- On a recent crop of family sagas, books which are “haunted by original sin and nourished by dreams of upward mobility.” | The New York Times
- I thought you might like a little intelligent conversation for a change: A short story by N.K. Jemisin. | Uncanny
- “Why do you think when a person goes to a comedy club, they don’t often think, I’m seeing art?” Sheila Heti interviews her brother David Heti, a stand-up comic. | The Point
- An act of insurrectionary mercy: on Toni Morrison’s Beloved at 30. | VICE
- “I think what the book is really about is less ‘sad Danez,’ it’s more about when you have to touch your mortality for the first time.” An interview with Danez Smith. | City Pages
- I actually want to seppuku an entire country: Jenny Zhang performs her poem “Seppuku.” | Nylon
- On two recent memoirs by Obama-era staffers, which “serve as a more devastating indictment of the current administration than a campaign-style book ever could.” | The New Republic
- “The police were shouting and jumping into the air, grasping at the boys’ shoelaces as they drifted upward into the clear night.” Three poems by Eve Ewing. | Guernica
- “For him, writing had come to serve the same purpose as the work of a blues singer.” On James Baldwin’s musicality. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- This is not the end nor the beginning: 24 poets on the fight to defend DACA. | Poetry Foundation
- The city of Detroit has hired America’s first “chief storyteller” to “give Detroiters a way to connect and discuss issues that don’t get covered by the city’s traditional media.” | The Guardian
- “If everything is political then maybe I don’t like political poetry. I want protest poetry.” Christopher Soto on politics and poetics. | Poetry Foundation
- Casey Affleck will star as the titular character in the film adaptation of John Williams’ beloved, “beautiful but not well-known” Stoner. | Variety
Object lessons in vicarious reading: 10 college courses to read along with this semester · On the life-changing potential of New York Times’ Modern Love column · Reflections on the (now-cancelled) hot Shakespeare TV drama· Sofi Oksanen curates a reading list on how women experience beauty· More than just another plot device: On the way we write about rape and trauma· The miracles of Serena Williams: Black sainthood will not fix white America · Am I a writer or a teacher? Kyoko Mori tries to make peace with her divided self · A bridge toward the novel: 5 essential linked short story collections· On the sneaky literary influences behind Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian · Chelsea Martin on the most important lesson she learned at art school (how to bullshit) · How academics survive the writing grind: some anecdotal advice
This week on Book Marks:
A eulogy for the present and the past: On John le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies · The mad ones: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at 60 · Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is “a furious brew with hints of Toni Morrison and Homer’s The Odyssey” · Profane, pornographic, and lewd: On Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School · The audacious bravado of Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House · On the 166th anniversary of its publication, a look back at the original 1851 reviews of Moby Dick · John le Carré, Chris Kraus, and more: the best-reviewed books of the week
