That title on a NY Times opinion piece simply signed The Editorial Board made me happy yesterday morning.

Cornelius Eady’s Book of Hooks AWP perfomance is reviewed in Hinged: Journal of Converging Arts.

Several people on a book arts list objected to another member posting a link, about Amazon having signed a contract to create an ultra-secure cloud chamber for the CIA. I re-posted that link here and I’m adding a confiirmatory link to DailyTech’s article. We’re talking 10-year, 600 million dollar CIA contract here. Will this CIA partnership ooze over into Amazon’s other affairs? Does it matter who you’re in bed with?

There is a killer poem of the week by Jacob Rakovan up on Split This Rock. Rakovan’s poem struck me close to home because I recently learned that one of our staff grew up the child of a coal miner. Once you see your own life in stark political relief it is impossible to un-see the political layer sewn through our lives. That’s how some people feel, while others are able to neatly cordon off politics from art.

Is it helpful to live in a protected art bubble? My engagement with the world is inextricable from art so for me it’s not really a choice. Being political for me is a side effect of breathing, the irrepressible expression of compassion.

Uber-intern Darla suggested the movie Perks of Being a Wallflower, which wound up far surpassing expectation. I forgive its lapses because it captures so well a certain bittersweet, at-risk intensity of mid adolescence, and because it feels true where it touches the depth of anguish that can lead to suicide and other, less final breakdowns. One of the characters in the film asks, How do you not feel all the suffering? He is, of course, an aspiring writer… This may be one of the books I have to dig up after seeing the film version.

One of my early mentors used to quote Gertrude Stein: One does what one can, and some of what one must. Today is a some-of day for me. Past experiences have led me to conclude that procrastination in small doses may actually be to greater purpose, and that purpose for me is usually timing. I am not espousing a philosophy of putting things off per se. I’m just saying sometimes, when you accomplish a task “belatedly” it turns out to be exactly the right time, for reasons you could not have known.