Salon.com > Writers and Writing

Salon limerick contest

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:34:00 +0000

The fiscal cliff loomed large in the poetic imagination this week, also Donald Trump:

We must avoid this oncoming cliff!

Or the question will be "when" not "if".

The nation will slide,

Into the divide,

'Tween reason and the Tea Party shift.

Keith Lehman

Leesburg, Va.

There once was a man named John Boehner

Who worked as an animal trainer.

He confronted the elephant

But his words were irrelevant

He's nuts, but his party's insaner.
Mike Cotler
Maplewood, N.J.

"Forty-seven percenters love 'stuff.'

For you moochers it's never enough.

You welfare rock-bottomites

You smug urban sodomites..."

Oh Mitt. We know losing is rough.

Caroline Ely

New York

Donald Trump needs a change of careers --

Knocking doors to sell ladies’ brassieres?

Cleaning fast-food grill spatter

Sweeping dogs’ fecal matter…

Adam Mansbach: My year on the bestseller list

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

It’s been a year since "Go the Fuck to Sleep" was published, and a year and a half since I read the manuscript at a museum in Philadelphia, taking the stage after a 94-year-old tap dancer. (You never want to follow a 94-year-old -- not on the freeway, not onstage.) But I woke up the next morning to find the book among Amazon’s top 100, despite the fact that it had not yet been published.

A lot of crazy shit has happened since then. Samuel L. Jackson, Werner Herzog, Thandie Newton and an adorable Filipina grandma all did readings that went viral. Corporate publishers tried to buy the book away from tiny, independent Akashic Books for a lot of money, and we said no. Jenna Elfman randomly made a music video, and in return for our not suing her, met up with us in Miami with a plastic baby doll to speak to fans of literature. Time magazine named "Go the Fuck to Sleep" its “Thing of the Year,” presumably in a squeaker win over that bacon-flavored mayonnaise. Sam Jackson and I teamed back up for “Wake the Fuck Up,” a pro-Obama video that reminded America of the importance of voting and vulgarity.

Lena Dunham: I don’t write for money

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Today's self-awareness award goes to "Girls" creator and $3.5 million book deal possessor Lena Dunham, who called writing for money "weird" in an introduction to Judd Apatow's script of "This Is 40."

Forbes:

Dunham ponders the “many reasons” people write which include “glory” and the ability to use the keyboard to “figure things out.”

As for filthy lucre? That’s deemed “a weird plan.”

Dunham's right if by "weird" she means "really bad." Still the optics may not sit well with Dunham's fellow young creatives, almost all of whom have internalized a bit more about the struggles that can precede artistic careers.

Even viewed in the worst possible light, however, Dunham's blithe attitude about her own success barely rates compared to that of Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, from this week's blockbuster profile in the New Yorker:

Salon limerick contest

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:18:00 +0000

Salon readers show mercy for General Petraeus, but none for Sen. John McCain, R. Ariz., in this week's limerick contest:

"An outrage is what we have here,"

Said McCain, leading Fox News to cheer.

The Benghazi 'collusion'?

Was merely delusion,

Designed as a Susan Rice smear.

Mike Moulton
Gainesville, Fla.

Obama’s new hashtag is meant,

2 help middle class taxpayers vent,

Via tweets 2 demand,

That their tax hike is banned:

#My2k’s needed 4 rent.

Madeleine Begun Kane
http://www.madkane.com
Bayside, Queens, N.Y.

The sad lesson of General Petraeus,

Is not that our heroes betray us;

But the ugly glare of publicity,

Along with our share of complicity,

Does more than our sins can to slay us.

James W. Moore
Montreal

Send your entries to limericks@salon.com. The deadline is 5 p.m. ET on Sunday. Please include your name and hometown. Good luck!

E.L. James named publishing person of the year

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:02:00 +0000

Publishers Weekly has pronounced "Fifty Shades of Grey" novelist E.L. James the publishing person of the year, a decision about as shocking as her books' brand of light bondage. Still, it wouldn't be publishing if there wasn't a bit of righteous indignation. Fortunately the Washington Post's "totally hip book reviewer" Ron Charles wears his lightly. Still, if he had a grave he'd be spinning in it.

Watch:

New education standards elbow out literature

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:41:00 +0000

English teachers are fretting that a set of curriculum guidelines could reduce the teaching of fiction and poetry in the classroom, the Washington Post reports. The Common Core State Standards, which will be implemented by more than 40 states by 2014, require that 50 percent of elementary school reading be nonfiction, climbing to 70 percent by 12th grade. Supporters, the Post says, believe American students have suffered from “a diet of easy reading and lack the ability to digest complex nonfiction, including studies, reports and primary documents,” leaving them unprepared for higher education and the working world.

Salon limerick contest

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:39:00 +0000

After the election Salon’s poet cavalry wondered what’s next for national politics:

The pundits can’t help be aquiver,

At the words of a man who delivers,

The data he crunches,

To ruin our hunches,

The new Anti-Christ is Nate Silver.

Doug Grabowski

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Barrack’s still commander in chief.

And each side will need time to debrief.

Will they work ‘cross the aisle?

Or continue hostile?

Time will tell if they change their motif.

Stephen Whitred

Barriere, B.C., Canada

The wealthy are starting to think,

Karl Rove's got his own Kool-Aid drink.

While the pundits just sit,

Praying “God won't he quit?”

Turd blossom finally starts to stink.

Chad Parenteau

http://www.chadparenteaupoetforhire.com/index.html

So we’ve come to this point, as a nation,

Where a white man with money and station,

Is no longer a shoe-in,

Salon limerick contest

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:48:00 +0000

Salon readers assess the results in five line verse:

Now NBC has a good reason,

To air “The Apprentice” this season:

For the public’s engrossed,

When its bigoted host,

Foments revolution and treason.

John Dillon

News Short n’ Sweet

@JFD8 on Twitter

It’s hard not to sound off and quote,

All the brain rot that sunk Romney’s boat,

Or to shout, “You unsightly,

Extremist nuts, bite me!”

But I’m far too enlightened to gloat.

Johanna Richmond

Red Hook N.Y.

I got rich by myself, so should you.

If you were smart you would know what to do,

First you pick the right dad,

Then you take what he had,

And keep those lower from starting a coup.

Kim Anderson

Gilbert, Ariz.

"Vote for me," Mitt Romney just said.

"Or else the economy's dead."

A plea or a threat,

Or him hedging his bet,

On congressional gridlock ahead?

Mike Moulton
Gainesville, Fla

There once was a dog named Seamus,

Whose owner had made him famous,

By strapping him to the roof,

Poor ol’ Seamus could say only, "Woof!"

As the contents shot from his anus.

Linda Moore

Hesperia, Calif.

At long last this great day has arrived!

And we wonder just how we survived.

The unseemly abundance,

Of rude, loutish pundits,

“Clearly, I didn’t think this through”

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:37:00 +0000

“And when exactly are you leaving?” My dad looked up from his computer.

He wasn’t talking about me leaving to go back home. I was home. Or rather, I was in their home, having moved back into my parents’ house about a year before. He was really asking when I planned on getting my life together. And it’s not that I didn’t agree with him, it’s just that I didn’t feel quite ready to give up my life of leisure, at least not yet.

It’s not like I didn’t watch my high school and college friends fall into line, one by one. As they became more stable, settling into lives that seemed plucked from the pages of an Ikea catalog, I strangely found myself regressing, exploring things that most people got out of their system when they graduated high school. As my friends hung works of art in their freshly painted foyers, I tacked up Michael J. Fox posters on my bedroom wall. As they set up savings accounts and monthly budgets in Excel spreadsheets, I dipped into my paltry funds for beer money. We looked at each other like we were different species and in a way we were: They were Homo sapiens maturus and I was Homo sapiens immaturus. If we mated, we’d probably start a whole new breed of human being.

Conservative pundit: “I don’t think much of Obama’s “us”

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:25:00 +0000

In Republicans’ first writings about last night’s defeat there was bitterness, doomsaying, defiance and contempt, sure, but also hints at how the party needs to reform if it’s going to compete in 21stcentury America:

Ben Shapiro, Breitbart.com

With Mitt Romney’s projected defeat in the presidential race tonight, Americans are very clearly divided into two camps.

The first camp is those who want a country of unending bailouts, of free giveaways, of government-provided goods and services – a camp of Americans who want to forfeit the future to guarantee ease and comfort in the present. The second camp is those who understand that that world is unsustainable, who recognize that freedom is the only guarantor of the present and the future.

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

Salon limerick contest

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:08:00 +0000

Salon's reader-poets take on drones, Hurricane Sandy and the absurdity of the election process.

"Why is the East Coast under the brine?"

Says a preacher: The reason’s divine.

"They'd avoid the malaise,

If they'd persecute gays,

And teach children intelligent design."

Michael Moulton

Gainesville, Fla.

Lesser evil, it now has been shown,

Deals death from the sky by the drone.

With this for a lesser,

Mitt's greater transgressor,

Must be evil beyond that ever known.

Daniel Fleisher

Baltimore

Ho Donald, once more you've weighed in;

Raised your whine in the midst of the din;

"I'm SIGNIFICANT . . . PLEASE!"

Twenty-four-carat sleaze . . .

And a brain to embellish a pin.

JF Stover

Hill City, Kan.

As a middle-class gal from the South,

Of course I have a big mouth.

I don't have a filter,

Or shame for my pilfer.

My politics take over the house.

Mary McChesney

Norfolk, Va.

Ohio and Iowa, too,

Are red, no wait, maybe they're blue.

PJ O’Rourke: We live in an age of “1984″-lite

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Let’s hear the top five. Gulliver’s Travels.

Well, in the first place it is very funny. We read it first as kids as an adventure story, without understanding the political context in Europe or the philosophical context. Then when we read it again as adults we realise that Swift is having a good deal of fun here. Just the religious allegory with the Big-enders and the Little-enders and the idea of people who live for ever. And don’t they just turn out to be the kind of people who live for ever today? They show every sign of Alzheimer’s.

When did you first read it?

I was about 14, I think. It was a little bit of a slog, but such a good story that I pushed forward with it. Swift’s take on human nature is evergreen. Whether people would use horses any more [as the perfection of nature], I don’t know. I don’t suppose we’re as familiar with them as Swift was; we’d use dogs or cats. No, not cats. There’s something a little wicked about cats.

Salon limerick contest

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:59:00 +0000

Salon's legion of poets take on Paul Ryan, Jack Welch and Joe Biden's smile:

His smile was big, wide and sparkly.

His tone was disdainful and snarky.

But like him or not,

Joe Biden was hot,

And didn’t put up with malarky!

Douglas McMillan

Sedgwick, Maine

Jack Welch, it would seem, has decided,

That the B-L-S should be derided.

He thinks they conspired,

To inflate numbers hired.

But sane people think he's misguided.

Mike Moulton

Gainesville, Fla.

Debating Paul Ryan, Joe won.

Moreover, he won by a ton:

Tough and energized, quick,

Hilary Mantel wins second Man Booker Prize

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Hilary Mantel won her second Man Booker Prize for "Bring Up the Bodies," the second novel of a planned trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, a minister to King Henry VIII. The previous novel, "Wolf Hall," also won the Man Booker.

The prize, worth approximately $80,000, goes to the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Mantel became the first woman to win the prize twice.

Watch a video of a May interview the author gave to the BBC:

Earlier this month the New Yorker published a profile of the author, "The Dead Are Real."

Benjamin Anastas: My novel made the world yawn

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:55:00 +0000

I lost my wife in a glass elevator at the Hilton in Frankfurt, Germany. Never mind that I hadn’t exchanged my wedding vows with Marina yet, or tried on the ring that she had engraved with the prophetically impersonal message YOU ARE LOVED. Never mind that Marina wasn’t in the elevator with me or even in the same country when I pressed the button to my floor and felt the car start to rise into the upper reaches of the hotel atrium — that it wasn’t her face looking up at me for a first and long-awaited kiss, her waist trembling in my hands, her handbag sliding off her arm and landing on my foot. It wasn’t Marina who touched my face as if to make sure that I was real and said, “Ti amo, Ben. Ti amo,” and who would spend the night with me in the half-light of a high-rise in the middle of the city, in an airless double room on hotel sheets that felt all wrong against the skin. What was I doing there? It’s not as simple as a fling in a foreign country that I thought I could get away with, though it did cross my mind that I would never have to tell another soul about the elevator ride.

In praise of Nobel obscurity

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Like a lot of people, I greeted today's news that Chinese writer Mo Yan has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature with the familiar feeling that the Swedish Academy had me on the back foot. I have never read a word the man has written. I comforted myself with the thin reassurance that at least I'd heard of him — and I'd even seen "Red Sorghum," a film based on one of his best-known novels!

Unlike a substantial percentage of the back-foot club, however, I've got no problem with the Academy's choice, or its history of selecting purportedly "obscure" recipients for the prize. From the handful of articles and reviews I've read in my frantic scramble to get caught up, Mo Yan seems to write the kind of novels I enjoy (and I really did love "Red Sorghum"). "Hallucinatory realism"? "A world of magic, sexual exploitation, ignorance and senseless violence"? Individual stories told against a backdrop of political and social turmoil? Sign me up.

Chinese writer Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for literature

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:34:00 +0000

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Chinese writer Mo Yan has been named the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, in Thursday praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."

European authors had won four of the past five awards, with last year's prize going to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.

As with the other Nobel Prizes, the prize is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million.

Nobel Prize for literature: This year’s favorites

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Who will win the Nobel Prize for literature? According to British gambling outfit Ladbrokes, the odds favor Haruki Murakami, the Japanese author of "1Q84," "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Norwegian Wood." Other top picks include the Hungarian essayist Peter Nadas ("The End of a Family Story," "A Book of Memories") and Irish playwright and novelist William Trevor ("Autumn Sunshine," "The Story of Lucy Gault"), who have each garnered international attention and boast a long list of literary awards. (Odds listed below, via Ladbrokes):

Salon limerick contest

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:41:00 +0000

Debating the debates and channeling Snoop Dogg in this week’s dose of doggerel.

With six weeks to go, Barry blinks.

And Romney's back in it! (Fox thinks);

"But unless Mitt can pick up

Ohio, this hiccup

Means nothing" (our strategist winks).

Cody Walker

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Obama says Mitt's meretricious.

But he's really the one who's been vicious.

And we know in our bones,

He'll keep firing drones,

‘Til he wipes out whoever he wishes.

James McEnteer

Quito, Ecuador

Obama, has your eloquence fled?

Romney may have came out ahead,

Yet he flip-flopped and dodged,

Each criticism you lodged.

There's SO much I wish you had said.

Douglas McMillan

Sedgwick, Maine

There once was a guvnor named Mizzle.

Lena Dunham on verge of $3.6M book deal

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:29:00 +0000

Lena Dunham can now afford pants. After bidding for her book proposal "Not That Kind of Girl" started at $1 million, Deadline.com is reporting that it has spiraled well into seven figures:

Lena Dunham's proposal for the book "Not That Kind of Girl" reached $3.6 million last night. Her lit agent Kim Witherspoon from InkWell Management is working the deal, and it should be finalized soon. The numbers for the book of advice and anecdotes from the UTA-repped 26-year old creator of the HBO series Girls should go even higher as publishers see her as an influential creative voice for young women. She met yesterday with editors.

After Nora Ephron died in June, Dunham wrote a moving tribute to her friend and mentor. Now she's the new queen of New York.