Catching Up

I've been M.I.A. for about a month.  Bad news bears.  I imagine I will not have many chances to post this semester either, as I will be student teaching very soon (next week!).  However, here are a few things I've bookmarked recently worth sharing.

Poems as Short Films
from Open Culture

A short film of Langston Hughes's "The Weary Blues"...

...and the original Cab Calloway performance (The Blues Brothers, anyone?)

Underground Map of Major Musicians
from The Guardian

click picture to zoom

Advice on Writing from Modernity's Greatest Writers
from Brain Pickings

"Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created — nothing." --F. Scott Fitzgerald

"A short story must have single mood and every sentence must build towards it." --Edgar Allan Poe

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." --T. S. Eliot

"Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie." --Stephen King

"Good fiction is made of what is real, and reality is difficult to come by." --Ralph Ellison

"The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction." --Tom Wolfe

"Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style." --Kurt Vonnegut