Here's a Halloween

...quiz on ghost stories. I scored a ghastly 2.

A poem

...mounted, in brushed-steel letters, on a 30ft-high wall. Yeah, that's my new dream. Mind you, it would be far more interesting to mount a replica of an edited page from a manuscript. I'm picturing one page of mine in particular that was recently sent back to me from my editor. I can see it now: a wall of brushed-steel text, complete with brushed-steel circles, strikethroughs, arrows and notes. Brushed-steel question marks.

A list of the 100 most important

...Canadian books will be complied by The Literary Review of Canada and we can put forth suggestions. Lynne van Luven writes about the challenges of this in today's Times Colonist.

Some articles

...on reviewing. (From wood s lot)

Northern mining town gothic

...is how Winnipeg-based writer, critic and editor Ariel Gordon describes my writing over at Fall Back. I like that.

Fall Back is the latest of Ariel's collaborations. A couple years back Ariel and I engaged in a series of homolinguistic translations inspired by the process Hilary Clark and Steven Ross Smith used in their collaboration, a selection of which was recently published as Pliny's Knickers. We heard them read from it back in 2003. At times I just about fell off my chair laughing. By the way, the chapbook is gorgeous.

Darwin and Einstein wrote

...lots of letters.

On this day in 1922

...Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room was published. I like the quotes from her diary.

I'm not sure what I think

...of this idea. (From GoodReports)

It would be fun

...to post my latest manuscript on a blog, to just get it out there.

Tonight I'll continue reading Dionne Brand's latest novel. And Simon Armitage's Dead Sea Poems finally showed up. I can't wait to dip into it.

The first image

...in "The Neurobiology of the Self," an article by Carl Zimmer, is fantastic. A Rough Grunt Dictionary caught my eye as well. (From The Loom)

Here's an important letter

...that all writers should read and think about.

A New Leaf

...is the title of an interesting article by Patrick Lane.

This look at the relationship between comics

...and art museums in the Los Angeles Times begins with a look at Canada and Seth.

The challenge of translating Dante

...is nicely described by Ciaran Carson, author of The Inferno of Dante Alighieri. (From Open Brackets)

There's a review of my book

...in today's Star Phoenix, but I can't read it. The Saturday paper won't get into town until late Sunday.

In other news, Yann Martel is back in Saskatoon. It is a great city.

"Is becoming lost

...the worst that can happen to a book? Not necessarily. The lost book, like the person you never dared ask to the dance, becomes infinitely more alluring simply because it can be perfect only in the imagination." Stuart Kelly in "Missing Masterpieces."

What if you put glasses

...on Keats? See the resemblance? I've been poking around the Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks, watching page after page of faces load. It's kind of creepy.

Not a bad price

...for 2,472 pages. That's 5 pounds of children's lit. I took a great children's literature course way back when. I still have all the books, The Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature included. That's where I first encountered Henny-Penny.

Ok, my open mike performance

...on the weekend was pretty boring in comparison. Next year I'm bringing props.

Rimbaud

...poems galore. I love the Mondoloni image that accompanies "Vowels." If you sketch in a pair of glasses and a smile, the resemblance is uncanny.

This timeline

...of art history and this collection of 3,162 English poems are helping me procrastinate. As if I need help.

Just now as I was editing

...a troublesome line in Bone Conduction, my current poetry project, this appeared in my inbox, and in it, believe it or not, I found a solution. Thanks Tracy.

War and Peace

...came in the mail today. The font in this edition is terribly small, so small that my eyes keep trying to read two lines at once. I haven't made it beyond the first page.

In the morning I'll head south

...to Regina to check out the Spring launch tomorrow night and attend the SWG conference and AGM on the weekend.

Alberto Manguel will present the Caroline Heath Memorial Lecture on Friday night.

More on Monday.

A mirror now

...inhabits my kitchen. It's taller and wider than me. I get lost in it. Now to get to my office I must walk until I almost run into myself and then turn left.

Here is Plath's "Mirror."

The price

...of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is a bit steep for me.

An interesting response to my article

...by Ami McKay, a writer living in Nova Scotia.

Tonight astronomy blogs

...led me to the antiworld and then to The War of the Worlds. (From Astronomy Blog and Bad Astronomy Blog)

The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary

...of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. (From Languagehat)

Absinthe, aka the green fairy

..."has returned to the drinks cabinet of artistic acceptability." Hmm. Edgar Degas and Robert Service certainly thought about its effects.

Entitlement, effectiveness

...and "the unanswerable question of what art is for." David Harsent, winner of the Forward prize, tackles these subjects.

Corpse art

...is a big thing these days. This story in The Miami Herald wraps up with an exchange between a boy handling a cirrhotic liver and the docent guarding the display:

""Is this real?" the boy asked.

"Yes," the docent said.

"How did you get it out?"

"It was dissected after a person died."

"Died? Who died?" the boy asked..."

We need a poetry idol

...or so says the title of this piece in The Guardian.

A look at the dissident

...author Andrei Sinyavsky and the Russian intelligentsia.

All I ever wanted to know

...about Cinderella. (From Hassenpfeffer)

Living in isolation vs. living in the scene

...is the topic of my article on Bookninja, an article that contains the thoughts of many contemporary writers from across Canada and abroad.

Another brainless list

...this is not. The list of the top science and technology sites chosen by Scientific American includes links to The Whole Brain Atlas and Mind Hacks.

The podcasts

...from the Winnipeg International Writers Festival have been posted.

The relationship between science and aesthetics

...is the topic of a column in Scientific American. It starts out with a little bit of Keats.

Speaking of souls

...this book review by Matthew Creasy begins with this: "James Joyce knew a thing or two about portraiture. “Never mind my soul,” he told the artist painting him. “Just be sure you have my tie right.”"

To dissect souls

...was Edvard Munch's aim, or so this article by Peter Conrad claims. He says that Munch "defined art as a symptom of our 'fear of life'; representation begins at what he called 'the point of impact' - the place where life cruelly digs into us."

I'm currently reading

...Stan Dragland's Stormy Weather: Foursomes, but I'm spending just as much time feeling up the gorgeous textures of this little hardcover. What a beautiful little book.

I imagine the Batman loving

...writer I know already knows about the dolphins. (From Hassenpfeffer)

The water puppet

...is apparently in trouble.

The literary taste makers

...of Australia receive a review of sorts.

This mediocre life

...doesn't sound all that mediocre to me.