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“As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.

Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.”

- Charles Bernstein at Harper’s

“…it’s a source of some pleasure to come upon one of one’s older books, and to see the work inside, both of its writer and its reader, who, on some pages, such as during a notorious eighty-page party scene told almost entirely in dialogue, plum lost his mind:”

- Wyatt Mason, at the Harper’s blog on marginalia and The Recognitions

“In my opinion, Philip Roth is the Oliver Stone of fiction. We are drawn to him because he creates strong characters and has a knack for plots and situations that catch our interest. But he is hopelessly heavy-handed, single-minded and irritatingly consistent. He’s been writing the same story since the 1960s, showing no growth or maturity and never developing an interest in the world outside East Coast USA.”

- Levi Asher

What I always find frustrating is that the Indie Bestseller list is of bestselling books in independent bookstores, which seems to me not that far from the bestselling books of the moment in non-indie stores. What I’d like to see is an Indie Bestseller list that is of bestselling books from independent publishers. Does such a thing exist?

“…This is the way that readers/reviewers/booksellers avoid ‘foreign’ books by essentially diminishing their importance. It’s the same sort of logic that dismisses the quality of something — like Cubs fans — by questioning it’s authenticity — even if they really don’t understand baseball — is a slippery slope.”

- Chad Post

“Willie’s story is more of a tall tale. Like Daniel Boone, Willie belongs both to American history and American myth. Huckster. Trickster. Philanthropist. Pothead. Road dog. Genius. His nicknames read like godly epithets of a peculiarly American sort–Shotgun Willie, the Red Headed Stranger, Booger Red. Like Boone, in his own lifetime Nelson has become a living symbol of pioneering American virtues–individualism, integrity, survival, self-made commercial success. And the people around him speak of him as if he were the Yoda of Austin.”

- Jason Chervokas reviewing Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson: An Epic Life

“I think industry mediocrity is more of a threat to the future of reading than television is.”

- Sarah McNally (owner of McNally Jackson books) quoted in the New York Observer

The point is that I need things to look and be a certain way in order to get into the full creative spirit. Wagner had to wear silk robes and work in a room with heavy drapes to keep a lot of the sunlight out, while Shostakovich could, and did, work in the middle of chaos like the German assault on Leningrad. I can crank out words and music in the middle of unpropitious circumstances if need be, but I prefer to have a work space and work environment that are creation-ready, and little totems nearby to help: Hot black coffee in an interesting mug, sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga pencils (HB2), cream-colored lined paper (I like Archives 18-stave orchestral book), my green-marble Waterman fountain pen nearby to ink things I’m going to keep.

- Greg Stepanich

“Land [founder of Polaroid] nurtured an idealistic vision of photography. He dreamed of a camera that would release the artist in everyone. ‘‘My basic faith,’ Land wrote, ‘is in the random competence of people in all walks of life, at any level of income, of any derivation. There is a common sense of beauty and of manual aptitudes.’”

- Phil Patton, on Polaroid’s announcement it would close its U.S. factories making instant film

“Let us open up our doors for writers the way that so many, not only in Brooklyn but across the country, have done for musicians (check out www.dodiyusa.org for an idea). The internet and its social networking sites have made the promotion of independent arts events not only extremely easy but extremely cheap (if not altogether free). If we as readers become the curators of our own literary events, we take the power out of the hands of publicists and publishers with bookselling agendas, and create a more organic experience. Furthermore, by hosting readings and performances outside of bars, we open doors to the under-21 crowd, which has a great literary energy but little access to events outside of the undergrad sphere.”

- Bryan Miltenberg at The Millions

“So, apropos of practically nothing (and not with a bang but a whimper) I tossed in a quotation from “The Waste Land.” That, I thought, will show him I’ve read a thing or two besides my press notices from Vaudeville.

Eliot smiled faintly — as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn’t need me to recite them. So I took a whack at “King Lear”…
That too failed to bowl over the poet. He seemed more interested in discussing “Animal Crackers” and “A Night at the Opera.” He quoted a joke – one of mine – that I had long since forgotten. Now it was my turn to smile faintly…

– Groucho Marx on his dinner with T.S. Eliot, quoted at Today in Literature

“I jumped at the chance to see him in concert, and managed to squeeze into the fifth row of the packed nightclub to gaze up at his thick hands laying that pulsing tremolo over those Bo Diddley chords on that beautiful box-shaped guitar. Bo Diddley was pretty old in 1987, but he wasn’t too old to snarl his lyrics, or to enjoy himself.”

- Levi Asher on Bo Diddley

“Miroslav Holub once said that when things were really bad in Eastern Europe, ‘it is a very poetic situation.’ It is a terrible thing to say, but Joseph [Brodsky] was blessed with ‘a very poetic situation.’ No American poet has had the opportunity to enjoy such terrible historical circumstances.”

- William Wadsworth interviewed by Valentina Polukhina at Words Without Borders

“My first ever review for that prestigious organ was due to appear and I was beside myself with glee and anticipation.

I grabbed the paper, flung the correct change at the newsagent, and opened the paper. There it was. My review. In glorious black and white type. And — wait a minute! what’s this? — credited to the poet Anthony Thwaite. I was gutted! Floored! And me poor mother … well, I doubt she’ll ever recover.”

- Mark Thwaite

“Next thing you know, Dunkin’ Donuts will be selling a Big Black compilation entitled Songs About Dunkin’.”

- Jeff Gomez

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