Oh, Canada

If you make it to a top 10 list as a writer that’s worth mentioning on your CV, during interviews and when “casually” trying to impress your date. But we hope you never make it to the top 10 Overrated Candaian Authors list. Since the Huffington Post and the Guardian recently ran their version of overratedness, Canada’s taking its turn now. And yikes! These reviews are brutal with scathing adjectives such as “solipsistic, humorless, and alienating” grovelling nouns like “tragedy and farce.” If you really want to get your acerbic on, check this one out. And be sure to check back once more for the National Press version of 10 Underrated Canadian Authors. But, hey why even bother with it, for all we know these could be of the top 10 most overrated articles.

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According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Susan Yount is having a good year. Yount is so determined to succeed as a poet that she says she’d sooner “live in a ditch and eat worms” than waitress again.

Check please!

But there isn’t anything bourgeois about Yount. She has become a strong literary example because her work depicts the sullen economic climate in which we live.

Wait…

We didn’t mean to remind you of your unpaid bills and resulting drinking problem. What we did mean, what you should truly focus on, is Yount’s tasty publication, Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal.

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Fireworks, Yes. Poetry, No.

Let’s begin with Russia: according to present-day law, citizens are allowed to gather in public places and hold meetings, rally, talk about political things. This also includes, we’re sure, the occasional poetry reading. But in this vast fur-wearing, vodka-drinking country, poetry is the bad influence friend that will get you in trouble. Even today, when Russians gather in non-violent forces, showing even the most remote hint of poetic idealism, they can still be arrested. Yeah, imagine meeting your friends in, say, Berkelely, reading a June Jordan poem, and then being shuttled to the police station wearing handcuffs.

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Often you’ll hear that a poetry reading should never run for more than 40 minutes, otherwise people start to go batty. Good advice, sure. But others disagree. These crazy people think poetry reading should be non-stop endeavors — lasting up to nine hours. Holy smokes, nine hours? That’s right, in the near future the Bay Area Poetry Marathon will explode like a word minefield, from 12-9 on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

Yes, poets be crazy.

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