A Poem by Tammy Ho Lai-ming
She began with a Chinese word: fai, which means
quick, swift, rapid, or to hurry up. She was
maturing and she needed no helmet from refined
lust. Quick, she must learn to prescribe
the bluntness of love, and lengthening
loneliness of long Summer afternoons entitled
to come. Swift to issue the notice of attention,
with density, to this girl and that boy. The body
should be dazzled, pebbled, jumbled, by that bitch
or that bastard. Rapidly,
she ought to fuse confusion with desire,
discovery, alliterative sighs. Hurry up!
This moment with this girl or that boy
inherited everything, including interlaced
kisses, illuminated cunts.
__________________________________________
Tammy Ho Lai-ming, aka Sighming, is a Hong Kong-born and -based writer. She is the editor of HKU Writing: An Anthology (March 2006), and a co-founder & a co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Read more at SighMing.
Tagged as:
Literature in the Media,
New Literature Online,
Poetry
First Run Print of 6+ Million
Dan Brown’s new novel, the Lost Symbol, is due out in stores September 15th. The book has an initial print run of six and a half million copies. Thousands of people have already pre-ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and the like. The author and his marketing team are notoriously secretive, especially when it comes to divulging information about plot. The book’s huge anticipation is based on Brown’s previous best sellers. Say what you will about the quality of his writing. The man sells books.
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Tagged as:
Essays,
Literature in the Media,
Print is Dead. Print is Not Dead.
Now With Pictures!
Wednesday and the world waits for the word. But the word, of course, is expressed, heard and understood by different people in different ways. Some people think printed books are dying, while others contest publishing is thriving. Ray Bradbury prophesied a similar dilemma, and now 451 is being published as a graphic novel. Iran is both loose and tight when it comes to words. Fortunately, the lit scene there is not. In fact, you might say it has found its voice. Singer/poet Leonard Cohen is admired for his words, more are written about him in the New Yorker. Yerra Sugarman discusses translating Yiddish poetry, the Seattle Times dismantles Kindle’s wordy appeal, and Silliman’s Blog has commentary on the New York School — that venerable hive of east coast wordsmiths — from which the Jersey poet Joel Lewis remains comfortably at odds. – Kevin Murphy
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Tagged as:
Literature in the Media,
New Literature Online,
Wednesday's Writerly Happenings
