Letters to Jackie Kennedy

JOHN-F-KENNEDY

More than a million people wrote letters to Jackie Kennedy after her husband’s assassination. Some were famous, like Langston Hughes, but most were just normal people, sending their condolences and expressing their sadness and bewilderment. In her new book, “Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation,” released by HarperCollins, Ellen Fitzpatrick went through these letters, and then went back and found the people who had written them (or their next of kin) to get their permission to republish them. The Times did a feature today which included a slideshow of several letters. Aside from being touched by how much a politician meant to ordinary people, I was struck by how well ordinary people – even those whose spelling and grammar suggests that they’re pretty much uneducated – knew how to write then. It’s hard to imagine letters like this being written today, or what they would look like if they were. For images of some of the letters, click “Read More.” Read More »

OneStory Mentorship

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OneStory, a wonderful publication that mails out one carefully chosen story every three weeks has just launched an editor mentorship program. For twenty-five bucks, you can sit down with one of the editors, who will have already read your work and will give you feedback as to how to make your story one of the eighteen they select each year from thousands. They are accepting submissions now for sessions on March 14th and the 21st at The Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn.

Shakespeare & Company, Paris

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When Gods walked the Earth and the Great American (And English and Irish) Novels were being written in Paris, Sylvia Beach’s English language book store Shakespeare & Company was heaven.  Though it was forced to close after the fall of Paris–and even Ernest Hemingway’s campy but symbolic libration of the site could not bring it back to life–George Whitman’s reincarnation of the store lives on across the Seine from Notre Dame. Here the next generation of expats–themselves deities in the literary pantheon–Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, James Baldwin, et al, made their home (sometimes quite literally). The strange warren of atticky aisles are just the way they were back when.  Now George’s daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman (no kidding) runs it and still maintains its great legacy.  While tourism the world over has turned great things that have lasted into museums of their former selves S&C keeps on.  Whitman has a literary festival and continues to host readings by the greats of contemporary English literature.  A hero and a heaven indeed.

Listen to Michael Silverblatt chat with Whitman fille here.

Jillian Weise Reading

THE COLONY

The author of poetry collections The Amputee’s Guide to Sex & Translating the Body reads from her debut novel, The Colony, just out from Soft Skull Press. She’ll be in the company of novelist Eric Puchner, reading from his own newly released Model Home. KGB Bar. 85 E. 4th. That’s this Sunday. 7p. Will it be a good night? Yes it will! A grand gathering at a beloved bar on our beloved Lower East Side.

Barry Hannah 1942 – 2010

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The great “farhearinged” Barry Hannah passes away way too damn young. 67 years. He will be madly missed. “The pier [of heaven shakes] under his feet, wrapped in socks and sandals.”

Sharon Olds Reading

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Sharon Olds reads with the Dickman twins this Thursday. Sharon Olds is the author of nine books of poetry including The Dead & the Living, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book is One Secret Thing. Matthew Dickman is the author of All American Poem, which won the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry.  Michael Dickman’s first book of poems, End of the West, was published in 2009. 
Apparently they are all somehow related. I would like to be in that family. I bet they write the best birthday cards.

March 4, 2010, 7 p.m.  Free and open to the public.

Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, New York, NY

Poetry by Matthew Dickman

NML

FOUR SWITCHES

1. VENT

I can feel the Christ inside me with his side cut open

so he can breathe like a fish

like someone who has been choking on a small bone, maybe

a tiny part of another animal’s vertebrae,

when a friend grabs him from behind, forces

him to lunge, the bone flying out into the restaurant’s candlelight.

And I feel like I am inhaling for the first time all day, a wind

from some mountain or the mouth

of a woman in boys underwear and blue lipstick

who has been chewing Wintergreen gum or smoking a menthol

exhales into my chest, slides her thigh along my ribs, oh

I can feel the Christ inside me shutter

and then sigh, the heaviness of his lungs let free like ripping

the Duct Tape off your lovers mouth

and pulling the soaked

handkerchief from the back of her throat in one long wet movement. Read More »