Think About It 041: MICHIKO KAKUTANI

According to a 2017 survey by The Washington Post, 47% of Republicans erroneously believe that Trump won the popular vote, 68% believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted in 2016, and more than half of Republicans say they would be okay with postponing the 2020 presidential election until such problems with illegal voting can be fixed.  Another study conducted by political scientists at the University of Chicago showed that 25% of Americans believe that the 2008 [financial] crash was secretly orchestrated by a small cabal of bankers, 19% believe that the US government had a hand in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and 11% even believe a theory made up by the researchers –– that compact fluorescent lightbulbs were part of a government plot to make people more passive and easy to control.

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (2018)


 

Use the link to read articles by North American literary and political critic MICHIKO KAKUTANI.  Her latest book The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump was published by Tim Duggan Books in July 2018.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/by/michiko-kakutani

 

 

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The Write Advice 112: ANNIE DILLARD

When you are stuck in a book; when you are well into writing it, and know what comes next, and yet cannot go on; when every morning for a week or a month you enter its room and turn your back on it; then the trouble is either of two things.  Either the structure has forked, so the narrative, or the logic, has developed a hairline fracture that will shortly split it up the middle — or you are approaching a fatal mistake.  What you had planned will not do.  If you pursue your present course, the book will explode or collapse, and you do not know about it yet, quite… What do you do?  Acknowledge, first, that you cannot do nothing.  Lay out the structure you already have, x-ray it for a hairline fracture, find it, and think about it for a week or a year; solve the insoluble problem.  Or subject the next part, the part at which the worker balks, to harsh tests.  It harbors an unexamined and wrong premise.  Something completely necessary is false or fatal.  Once you find it, and if you can accept the finding, of course it will mean starting again.  This is why many experienced writers urge young men and women to learn a useful trade.

The Writing Life (1990)


 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American novelist, essayist and educator ANNIE DILLARD:

 

http://www.anniedillard.com/

 

 

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Poet of the Month 051: SHAKILA AZIZZADA

SHAKILA AZIZZADA
May 2012

CAT LYING IN WAIT

 

They don't bode well,
these words.

Don't tell me the door to Paradise
opens between my lips.

In the cleft between my breasts,
God himself tripped.

I'll come

and again
your breath will breathe
inside me,
your lungs will fill
with my scent,
your tongue will
rain, rain,
rain again on my skin.

I'll give in.

And this time,
when you come with that glint
in your eye, bent
on tearing me apart, you'll be,

without a shadow of a doubt,

like the black cat that leapt
out of hiding, cut
across my path just now,
hunted down
the sparrow at your door
till she fell
stunned and captive.

 

 

 

date unspecified

Translated by

  

MIMI KHALVATI 

 

and  

 

ZUZANNA OLSZEWSKA

 

 

 

 

The following biographical statement appears on the website of The Poetry Translation Centre.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]
 

 

Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely addressed by women poets writing in Dari. 

 

After studying Law at Kabul University, Shakila read Oriental Languages and Cultures at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, where she now lives. She regularly publishes tales, short stories, plays and poems. Her first collection of poems, Herinnering aan niets  [Memories About Nothing], was published in Dutch and Dari and her second collection was published in 2012. Several of her plays have been both published and performed, including De geur van verlangen [The Scent of Desire]. She frequently performs her poems at well-established forums in The Netherlands and abroad. 

 

Shakila was one of the poets who took part in the PTC's Persian Poets' Tour in May 2012. 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more poems by Afghan poet SHAKILA AZIZZADA:

 

 

https://poetrytranslation.org/poems/epitaph

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 008: MOHAMMED BENNIS

 

 

 

 

Last updated 13 April 2021 

 

The Write Advice: CARTOON 008

© 2011 Debbie Ridpath Ohi

 

Use the link below to visit the website of Canadian writer, cartoonist and illustrator DEBBIE RIDPATH OHI:

 

http://debbieohi.com/

 

 

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All I Need To Write (2013) by GRANT SNIDER