Listen to This: The Stacked Podcast

Last Friday, I went out to Brooklyn and hung out with Christina Oppold, the creator of the literary blog Stacked, to talk about The Art of Immersion, a book by Wired contributing editor that looks at the new forms of storytelling being built around entertainment properties like Avatar, The Dark Knight, and Lost. The result: a 50-minute conversation about (among other things) how these narrative innovations might affect the publishing industry, with occasional detours through the existential hysteria prompted by Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, the real meaning of Fahrenheit 451, the ascendancy of Amanda Hocking, and the transparent elitism of Andrew Keen.

There’s a point in the podcast where we’re talking about fan wikis, and Christina mentions Terry Pratchett, and I’m all, “If there isn’t a Discworld wiki, there should be.” Well, there is a Pratchett wiki, which was intended to be just about Discworld, so there you go. (Same for the Wheel of Time wiki.)

This was a lot of fun, and I know Christina has big plans for future episodes, so keep an eye out!

1 April 2011 | listen to this |

Martin Espada, “How to Read Ezra Pound”

At the poets’ panel,
after an hour of poets
debating Ezra Pound,
Abe the Lincoln veteran,
remembering
the Spanish Civil War,
raised his hand and said:
If I knew
that a fascist
was a great poet,
I’d shoot him
anyway.

The Trouble Ball is the new collection from Martín Espada. The Academy of American Poets has published an excerpt of the title poem, and W.W. Norton has put “Blasphemy” online. Blog This Rock posted “Isabel’s Corrido,” and I’ve also found video taken last year of Espada’s first public reading of that poem.

1 April 2011 | poetry |