Extraordinarily Narcissistic Writer

Righteous Winter day in Seattle. Work, dog, poems, grade, repeat.

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Shortly after songs hit the internet, Ruder is playing them on his show. "That's the beauty of KEXP—we don't have to wait to see whether a song's test marketed before we add it to a playlist," Ruder gushes. "We have the freedom to play what we want to create an exciting show. I feel like the whole purpose of KEXP is to expose people to new music and enrich people's lives through the discovery of music. That's really close to what I'm passionate about, to have this station be a filter."

-The Stranger covers what surely is the best radio station out there, KEXP

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And so I do not outlaw slam. If slam becomes the new orthodoxy, then highly talented, highly gifted young poets will be forced to fit the mold and, being, forced, will subvert slam and change it from within. At least, I hope so. At any rate, my qualms against slam:

-Joe Weil on Slam Poetry over at THEThePoetry

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Didion’s genius is that she understands what it is to be a girl on the cusp of womanhood, in that fragile, fleeting, emotional time that she explored in a way no one else ever has. Didion is, depending on the reader’s point of view, either an extraordinarily introspective or an extraordinarily narcissistic writer. As such, she is very much like her readers themselves. “I’ve been reading you since I was an adolescent,” a distinctly non-adolescent female voice said on a call-in show a decade ago, and Didion nodded, comprehending. All of us who love her the most have, in ways literal and otherwise, been reading her since adolescence.

-excellent essay on Joan Didion's work over at The Atlantic

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Northwest.