Sunday Sentence

ManTypingAnother Sunday in which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, which asks others to share the best sentence(s) we’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

No one ever says, “Hey, if you’re a full-time accountant having kids will prevent you from being a full-time accountant.”

Source: Tobias Bucknell, interviewed by Guy Gonzalez for the new “Writer Dad” series on the VQR blog.

(I’ll stick to the “without commentary” precept for the moment, but may have more to say about this series and the whole question of “balancing” writing with other commitments–family and beyond–another time. For now, I’m just grateful for the sage comments Bucknell offers in this interview. They’re oh-so-refreshing.)

Friday Finds for Writers

Treasure ChestWriting-related resources, news, and reflections to enjoy over the weekend.

  • A return to the issues of “niceness” in book reviews, the differences between reviews and publicity pieces, and similar topics, occasioned by the announcement of Isaac Fitzgerald’s new job.
  • On the Ploughshares blog, Rebecca Makkai shares “14 Ways to Tick Off a Writer.” (I confess that I’m guilty of committing #11–albeit in an un-patronizing way [I hope]. I really do believe that completing a novel draft is a huge achievement.)
  • Need some help with your poems? (I sure do.) Check out Carmen Giménez Smith’s “Twenty-two Poem Hacks” on the Harriet blog.
  • Speaking of poetry: Diane Lockward follows up on the fate of six rejected poems.
  • Jane Friedman offers tips on finding and working with a book publicist.
  • Have a great weekend.

    Wednesday’s WIP: Kristallnacht in Poetry & Prose (Part II)

    The shattered stained glass windows of the Zerrennerstrasse synagogue after its destruction on Kristallnacht. Pforzheim, Germany, ca. November 10, 1938. (USHMM/Stadtarchiv Pforzheim)
    The shattered stained glass windows of the Zerrennerstrasse synagogue after its destruction on Kristallnacht. Pforzheim, Germany, ca. November 10, 1938. (USHMM/Stadtarchiv Pforzheim)
    If you follow my other blog (My Machberet), you may have noticed a weekend post about the 75th anniversary of the pogrom known as “Kristallnacht” and ways in which the event has shown up in my own writing, particularly in some of the stories in my collection Quiet Americans.

    But I’m far from the only one to have written about Kristallnacht in some way. This week also brought plenty of reminders of that fact.

  • After seeing my post, Lawrence Schimel pointed me to this piece of his. Via Twitter, he added that it is part of a larger project–“IN THE SCHWARZWALD: poems using Grimm fairy tales as the lens through which to examine the Holocaust.”
  • Also notable: Janet Kirchheimer’s op-ed, published last week, about Holocaust remembrance through poetry. (I met Janet and became familiar with her work when we appeared on a panel together in 2011.)
  • Finally, this week brought me the good fortune of meeting up here in New York with Jonathan Kirsch, whose latest book (The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris), is intimately connected with the history of Kristallnacht.
  • How about you? Are there any literary works you’d recommend that address Kristallnacht?