by E. Rowan
One of the perks of living in a great city like Boston is that there is always a wealth of things to do. An overwhelming wealth. And I find that living here, I tend to not do a lot of it a lot of the time. When there’s always something interesting to do, it’s hard to get motivated to get out and do it. That’s why I love having friends come to visit – it gets me off my couch, […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Boston
by E. Rowan
A few weeks ago I wrote a little about the Bulwer-Lytton contest for the worst opening line of a fictional work. Recently, my freelance work as a copyeditor has given me access to some of the worst written non-fiction sentences I’ve read since I stopped reading philosophy and literary theory a few years ago. I’ve been complaining a bit about particular instances here (yesterday’s post on the verb “use” being underused…) and on Twitter (@ericamena, if anyone cares). So it […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: style, writing
by E. Rowan
What is the problem with the verb use? I would really like to know who decided that use was too plain/simple/boring to be used anymore, and started the rash of other, highly upsetting jargon-y words that mean something close to use. Like utilize, for example. Can anyone give me a good reason that I should utilize a word instead of use it? Or deploy. Or employ. For example: I am currently employing my spoon to eat cereal? In what world […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: grammar, style
by E. Rowan
Marie Alexander Poetry Series’ Open Submissions Period The Marie Alexander Poetry Series has an open submission period during the month of July. An award of $500 and publication will be given for a chosen collection of prose poems by an American poet. Submit a manuscript of at least 48 pages, which can include some lineated pieces, along with a cover letter with complete contact information and an SASE for notification only. Postmark must be between July 1 and 31. Entries […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: contest, prose poetry
by E. Rowan
I recently started work as a freelance copyeditor for a textbook company. I’ve so far had two fairly large projects, one a guide for passing a legal examination, and another a freshman rhetoric textbook. In both projects, something has come up that I’ve been struggling with. American. As a Latin Americanist, it’s always troubled me that we don’t have an equivalent English word for estadounidense, literally, a person from the United States of America. We don’t have our own specific […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by E. Rowan
In March, Google launched the first inter-species translation app. I’m just learning about it now, but the vast stores of literature as yet undiscovered in the animal world will soon be coming to light, and I for one couldn’t be happier. My suspicion is those cats have been recording the finer points of human history for centuries. Here’s a video showing how it works.
Categories: Uncategorized
by E. Rowan
As I’ve mentioned, I’m in Corfu, and so somehow missed the news last week that W.S. Merwin is the new U.S. poet laureate. Merwin is almost solely responsible for the course my life has taken, and since I’m convinced I have few if any readers, I feel no qualms about sharing the story here. I’ve been trying to write a poem for him for years. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but for now, memoir it will be. At fifteen I had very […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: poet laureate, poetry, translation, W.S. Merwin
by E. Rowan
There is an excuse for the irregularity with which I’ve been writing. Several, in fact, the most recent of which is that I’m in Greece attending the University of Iowa’s Overseas Writing Workshop. Corfu, to be precise, and it’s awfully hard to remember there are more important things than talking about translation and poetry in the shade after swimming in the Ionian Sea. But, the new Reading the World Podcast finally made it up! This is the last of the […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Bill Johnston, Chad Post, Reading the World, Three Percent, translation
by E. Rowan
I’ve discovered the best writing contest, or at least, the only one I have any chance of winning. It is the Bulwer-Lytton prize for the “worst opening sentence” presumably of a work of fiction. I’ve long dreamed of a forum to publish the bad writing I’ve come across in my various positions of editorial gate-keeper. In fact, in my first editorial role at my undergraduate literary journal there was a poem so spectacularly bad that the poetry editor and I […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: bad writing, contests
by E. Rowan
I recently learned to silkscreen, and the first project I did was a fantastic letter-press printed (that I set and printed) manifesto called “Writers Fear No Wild Beast More Than The Mucogenerative Cave Organism Called In The Common Speech ‘Translation.’ A Manifesto.” It was co-authored by last year’s editors of the University of Iowa journal of literary translation eXchanges, Sara Gilmore and Mike Schorsch. So we screenprinted the eXchanges logo, (“=”), on the front of them, and handed them out […]
Categories: Uncategorized
E. Rowan Mena