Interesting Things on the Sister Blogs

I'm very excited about the conversation I just had with poet and essayist Mark Doty--go have a listen on the Writers At Cornell Blog. Mark is a visiting writer at Cornell this semester, and gave an excellent reading here last week (along with other visiting profs Paul Lisicky and Denis Johnson). Today we talked about his poetry, particularly his preoccupation with animals; how his treatment of death, as a subject, has changed over the years; and the notion of artistic representation (and its place in artworks themselves). Mark is hugely articulate about his own work, and it was a great talk.

Over on The Litlab, poet Virginia Heatter offers up a surprisingly funny homophonic translation of Sappho--or, as she prefers to call it, an "aural Rorschaching." Virginia is an MFA student in poetry at Cornell.

Finally, I want to say how very much I love Adrian Tomine's new New Yorker cover. Perfect--literature from laptop to hobo campfire.