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April 07, 2014
Compression
In Stephanie Bolster’s “A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth,” the writing is acutely compressed, each word standing in for what in another poet’s hands might take pages. There’s no room ...
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April 05, 2014
Fear of Flying
I gave a public performance the other night. It was supposed to be a reading from my recent novel, “The Outside World,” but I thought I’d sneak in a few poems from my “Invisible Dogs” as well. ...
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April 04, 2014
Fame
Patrick Friesen is a true lyric poet, open and honest, singing more often than talking. His poems are almost bodiless, his words slowly turning into rivers. In “Earth’s Crude Gravities,” language ...
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April 03, 2014
Voice
Maureen McLane’s book, “My Poets,” goes beyond poetics and criticism into a kind of channeling of the poets themselves: her versions of their work, her obsessions with their obsessions. She not ...
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April 01, 2014
Welcome to National Poetry Month
I always feel a bit uncomfortable when Poetry Month commences. It’s like I’ve had a secret for the last eleven months, no one really interested in how I’ve spent my days, successfully managing to ...
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March 30, 2014If Not DRM, What Then? (Part III)
Just a last few words and thoughts on DRM.DRM Can WorkOne hallmark of the anti-DRM argument is that DRM doesn't and cannot work. Doctorow lays out the reasons in the first part of his talk to the Microsoft ...
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March 28, 2014If Not DRM, What Then? (Part II)
A few people, some of them writers, have written to me, wondering about the fuss surrounding DRM. They very much want their work protected from copying, and didn’t realize a kind of hysteria exists ...
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March 27, 2014
The Proust Questionnaire, with Barry Dempster
Barry Dempster is a poet, novelist, short fiction writer, children's writer and an editor, and is Open Book: Toronto's April 2014 Writer-in-Residence.Stay tuned throughout the month to hear from Barry ...
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March 25, 2014If not DRM, What Then? (Part I)
Over the next few days, I’m going to discuss DRM – Digital Rights Management – a way of “locking” a digital product, such as an ebook, to control its distribution. This has become a controversial ...
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March 23, 2014Cormac Mccarthy: "the Ugly Fact Is Books Are Made out of Books"
Before the publication and Oprahfication of The Road, and the Oscar success of No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy was a critically-loved but relatively obscure novelist, unknown outside hardcore ...
