Great Regulars: "I don't know what marriages are like

in general," she [Joyce Carol Oates] says, "but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that. It all comes out in the writing; that's enough. And my husband doesn't read my writing either."

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: The grandmother of invention

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Has the shortlist lived up to the promise of the longlist? And what about the inclusion of McEwan? To my mind, On Chesil Beach is a very slender book for a Booker shortlistee (though perhaps that's sizeist of me).

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Here it is: the Booker shortlist

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As Billy [Mills] points out, this poem reveals a clear debt to [William Carlos] Williams' 'This is Just to Say', particularly in the final lines, and in the cleanness and simplicity of the language, too. What do you think of it?

Anecdote of Tangerines by Lew Welch

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Poem of the week

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In "River-doors", he [Sean O'Brien] describes the "foul yawn of low tide" working its way into "estuarine polyps and leathery excrescences", the viscosity of his language providing a gratifying echo of the foetid water's slurp and suck.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Water, water everywhere

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