On a recent Friday night, tired and looking for something my wife and I would both want to watch, I saw that a new season of “Poetry in America” had just landed on PBS. (The weekends are pretty wild around here.)
We watched the episode on Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser” and I was reminded how good this series is. Smart, affecting and visually interesting, the episode pulls together a range of voices to talk about the poem, written about what the poet witnessed within the Civil War infirmaries. At just 25 minutes or so, it was packed with emotion, drama, music, history and more. I was hooked.
I reached out to “Poetry in America” host Elisa New to talk about the series, her favorite moments and how she manages to get planetary scientists, basketball players, rock stars and Supreme Court Justices on the show to talk about poetry. Despite recovering from COVID-19, New was totally delightful and shared some interesting background about the show.
You can read that conversation online and see it in print in the Playlist section of your paper next Friday. New was also kind enough to answer questions for this newsletter about what she’s reading, the books that changed her life and her favorite illustrations. Read on for that and check out “Poetry in America.” I think you’ll like it.
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OK, I have no involvement in the following, but I feel like I would be letting you down if I didn’t share the following information.
Bookshop.org, the online bookseller that supports independent booksellers, is sponsoring something called the Golden Bookmark Sweepstakes going that says one winner will receive an annual $600 gift card as long as they live (for up to 75 years, anyway), and that grand prize winner will have $500 donated to a bookstore of their choice. Five second place winners get a one-time $100 card.
That sounds a lot like the winner getting books for life, which is something I’m pretty sure has crossed the mind of every reader at one time or another.
Go to Bookshop.org to read the rules, or you can enter here. I have no stake in this thing, and I imagine the odds are astronomical, but I hope one of you wins and then tells us all about the books you got with it. Good luck!
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And finally, Greek writer Christos Ikonomou was named the first-ever recipient of the Chowdhury Prize in Literature, an annual international mid-career award for exceptional writers. The honor, which comes with a $20,000 award and a gala ceremony in April, is sponsored by University of Southern California, Kenyon College, and the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation.
What also makes this award interesting are the judges who chose Christos Ikonomou: literary heavy hitters Maggie Nelson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Claudia Rankine, Arthur Sze and David Ulin, who alerted us to the award. That’s a pretty incredible lineup, so I plan to get to know Ikonomou’s work soon.
OK, let’s get to this week’s Q&A with Elisa New, links to some terrific stories, and the week’s best-sellers.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
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Elisa New says one big book feels like a lifetime commitment
Elisa New and Linda Hogan from “Poetry in America.” (Photo credit: Verse Video Education/Courtesy of Poetry in America)
Harvard professor Elisa New is the director and host of “Poetry in America,” which explores great works of American poetry, including poems from Walt Whitman, Richard Blanco, Evie Shockley, Robert Frost and others. We talked to her for a story about the new season and she was also kind enough to answer our book-related questions for this newsletter. The new season is currently airing episodes from its third season on PBS, pbssocal.org and poetryinamerica.org.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life — a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
It wasn’t a person so much as a place. The intoxicating atmosphere of children’s libraries – shelves full of hundreds of books I hadn’t yet read.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
The first book of poetry was the Golden Book version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” The first fictional books that really mattered for me were the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I think I became a scholar of 19th century American literature right then, at the beginning of third grade, when I read the series straight through. I can still see those Garth Williams pictures.
Q. What are you reading now?
I just read George Saunders’s amazing book on the Russian short story, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” It’s ostensibly directed at writers and shows them how some of the great classic short stories were constructed. The book was great as unpretentious and immensely insightful literary criticism. But I read it as a how-to. Constructing a television episode is not that different from a short story. You have to keep the viewer with you.
Q. How do you choose what to read next?
I am often reading books tied to television work I am doing. The Saunders book above was part of a lot of reading I’m doing on Russian literature as I move toward editing a television episode on Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
I still haven’t read David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” Even though I’m a fast reader, that behemoth represents a time commitment I haven’t yet been willing to make. More than other books, deciding to read “Infinite Jest” feels like deciding to get married. Am I ready to commit?
Q. Which are some of your favorite book covers?
I love children’s book covers from the 1920-1950s – illustrations by Garth Williams, Tasha Tudor, Clement Hurd, Virginia Lee Burton.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most — and what would like to read more of?
19th century anything.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience — good or bad — you’re willing to share?
I often think about how I will probably not live long enough to read all of Emily Dickinson’s poems as they deserve to be read. I know hundreds of her poems, but for every one I know, there are three I’ve I’ve skimmed or skipped.
She wrote almost 1,800.
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