The Twitter Novel: Fashion or a Fad?

An Argument Against The Twitter Novel

It took DSM a long time to embrace Twitter. The micro-blogging service sounded inane, brimming with words spewed hastily to readers that barely read. Reading a sentence online is different than reading a sentence in a book. Even the most acute readers are influenced by the machine. A particular haze descends. Words march by like uniformed soldiers. Our eyes gloss over. Twitter is the king of gloss. Reading on Twitter is like riding a tall water slide, watching the landscape zip by. Sure, you can see the rooftops and the clouds, maybe even a distant plane moving across the sky. But it takes sheer determination to separate the joys of being on a water slide and the challenge of registering clearly an image — and with that image a thought, and with that thought an opinion.

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DSM Poetry Contest Update

DSM Poetry Contest

To all those who have submitted poems to our first annual poetry contest, Thank You. We are encouraged by your enthusiasm and talent. Seriously, the work thus far has been great reading. For those who have not yet submitted, please do so soon. We are only accepting 300 applications. Doing so gives us plenty of time to sort, select and determine our winner. Spots are going fast. So again, if you want to participate in our contest, in which the grand prize winner will see a book of his or her poems published, send your submissions today.

Currently we are reading the submissions that have come our way since opening the contest. This means that anyone who submitted between October 22nd and October 30th (tomorrow is the last day for submissions!), we are reading your work. You know who you are.

We provide contest updates each Friday.

Here’s some inspiration. It’s a video of Robert Lowell reading Old Flame. Thanks again, everyone. And have a great weekend.

Vidal Consults The Dome

Gore Vidal is an irascible pug. He’s not a shabby writer, either. Throughout his long life he has hobnobbed with America’s best and brightest, as well as quite a few highfalutin international personalities. He is an opinionated man, happy to direct a quip toward writers, politics and movie stars. His signature volubility is on display in a recent interview with The Atlantic. Also today we have the world’s largest book, which documents the culture and history of Bhutan. The online portal Fictionaut, celebrated for its support of the short story, is praised in Media Bistro. Publishers Weekly announces the best books of 2009, Safran Foer talks about writing and complains about people who eat animals, Hemingway’s Cuban papers are coming to the JFK Museum, and Marianne Moore, along with a host of other highly regarded 20th century poets, go ’round the table on Silliman’s Blog. Read on, it’s candy for the mind. — Kevin Murphy

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No one looks twice at a sparrow or squirrel . . .
but a peregrine falcon or mountain lion is a
lifetime experience. –Edward O. Wilson

Just yesterday morning Jack was reading on the deck
when what well might be the fourth
perched itself on the lowest limb of the nearby oak
and interrupted with “a strain
of invective that was irresistible.”

Two years ago the third startled him–having slipped
off a branch thirty feet above, it plopped
one stride ahead of him and lay splashed–
though, quick as a sidestep, a spasm
thrashed it back on its feet.

The second
surprised him in the fall of 1969
in Lafayette Square when it darted out of the way
by climbing his trousers
up to his thigh.

And the fall he was four
the first so frightened him by lying stiff
and half buried in the wet leaves of a gutter
that he jerked free from his mother’s hand
and dashed halfway across the honking street.

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Born in Columbia, Missouri, William Aarnes grew up in Fargo, North Dakota (his house blew away in 1957). He now lives with his wife in Clemson, South Carolina, and teaches at Furman University.

Have Another Beer With Dark Sky

Fear don’t care about you. They sure as hell don’t care about SNL. But we care about fear. It’s a spooky weekend, and it’s a spooky world. Avant-garde music strikes fear, while modern art usually does not. June Glasson’s work is the exception — feminist art can be quite threatening to the male hegemony. Lord Byron pushed the conventions of his time, which caused a little fear, but none in a clergyman named Francis Hodgson. Journalists are already in terrifying times, but now the courts are coming after them. Finally, Haymarket Books seems to be the only press that is not afraid of progressive politics and sports. Trick or treat. – Andrew Geer

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