Thought I’d take a second to post a different type of entry and share a few things that have inspired me this past week.
Here’s a link to an amazing story written by a kid who was probably doing his MFA at UM while I was there for undergrad. He won the Avery Hopwood award as well as the Andrea Beauchamp award for this story which saw publication in Granta and then in the collection, Sightseeing. The story is called “Farangs” and is narrated by a Thai boy, Luk who has a pet pig named Clint Eastwood. Despite his mother’s warnings, Luk keeps falling in love with American farang girls.
Soul-Sides is an audioblog with an emphasis on classic soul, R&B and contemporary soul-funk. There are daily music downloads and this week an incredible youtube video of Stevie Wonder ripping it on drums.
In Wendell Berry’s latest collection Given there is a poem which just may be the poem of all poems, one which I’ve been striving to attain the essence of in my own work. The poem is called, “How to be a poet” and you can read and listen to it on The Writer’s Almanac , scroll down to Thursday October 13, 2005.
An excerpt from Maxine Kumin’s poem, “The Final Poem” published in Visiting Frost: Poems inspired by the life and work of Robert Frost edited by Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro: “he rose and flung this exit line: / Make every poem your final poem.”
Jonas Lamb 