Writers are like magic
“I do like tricks. I like trap doors, and framed narratives, authorial interjections, unreliable narrators, complications, reversals, and ambiguity, as long as the characters in a story and their experiences still compel, still have a certain emotional complexity and power.” So says Northampton author Kelly Link, who’s been a reviewer for our Artist Fellowships Program, in a bubbling magic potion of an interview in the New England online literary magazine Meeting House.
But if writers have magic powers, a literary agent points out their counterspell: impatience.
Bailout Art
In Harpers, Charles Bernstein quells our fears with news of a massive poetry bailout. The poem-economy will be saved!
Art dealer Edward Winkleman discusses how the economic downturn turns down art prices:
(Consider) what raising prices too quickly for younger artists is likely to do to their markets now. I talked with an artist at an openly recently who said he was glad his dealer had kept his prices reasonable. I got the sense that this was a recent epiphany for him, that had we talked a year ago, he might have expressed frustration that his prices were not as high as those of some of his contemporaries.
Poet Country
The Word Up book blog at the Boston Phoenix talks to Michael Ansara about the upcoming Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Lowell. It’s the first time there’s been a Massachusetts Poetry Festival – here or in any state!
Speaking of poetry-fests: Best American Poetry blog covers this weekend’s Chinese poetry festival at Simmons College in Boston.
Art trips
A prominent arts journalist makes the jazz education pilgrimage to Berklee.
DIY Days, a two day workshop that asks how filmmakers distribute, monetize, and otherwise “do” their work without major studio backing, travels to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design today (Friday, October 3) and tomorrow.
New England Film goes behind the scenes on “Don McKay,” an indie feature being shot in North Andover.
And just to come full circle. Ish.
Remember that interview with Kelly Link I told you about way up at the start of this roundup? It ends with these great words purportedly for 16-year-olds but useful (I say) for artists twice or three times as old: “Hang on. Life mostly gets better. One day you will discover your superpower. Don’t be ashamed of the things that you love.”
Especially if that’s art.
Image: Jack O’Hearn, THE STOREHOUSE (2007), oil and paper on canvas, 30 in. x 36 in.
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