The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers
By now, you’ve doubtless heard that Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has won the most recent Nobel prize for literature. But have you heard this? “Tranströmer lost his ability to speak and the use of his right arm after suffering a stroke in 1990. Since then, he has continued to play piano with one hand. According to The Independent, the poet will express himself through the piano.”
One of my literary lights, the stupendously gifted writer and human being Sage Cohen, wears so many hats that even I, fan that I am, had nearly forgotten one of them: Sage’s role as founder of Queen of Wands Press, which has just released Finding Compass, a poetry collection by Carolyn Martin. Check out this interview with Ms. Martin.
The latest news from the world of author archives: “The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has acquired the archive of Nobel Prize-winning writer and University of Texas at Austin alumnus J. M. Coetzee. Spanning more than 50 years, the archive traces the author’s life and career from 1956 through the present.” (via The Literary Saloon)
I’m eager to read through a special roundtable on “poetry and race” in Evening Will Come, a journal of poetics. (via the Poetry Foundation)
Hopefully, by the time The New York Review of Books publishes the second part of “A Jewish Writer in America,” which reflects a talk originally given by Saul Bellow in 1988, I’ll have been able to digest fully part one. Oh, so much to read and think about.