Newsflash: being shifty-eyed can boost your creativity. Excellent.

Palin poetry.

Computer says Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are not good writers at all. Computer says no.

A Portrait of the “Artist” as a Young Man, The “Great” Gatsby, and other great works of literature made sarcastic by quotation marks. [Thanks, Courtney!]

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle–beloved by violent guerilla troops around the world–secretly always wanted to be a poet.

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Poetry is sort of a curious object for me. I enjoy reading poems. I love spoken word poetry, though I know it’s not for everyone. I love how poetry is about the joy of language, the purity of expression, etc. But I have an utter inability to write it. And often when I’m reading a poem I feel like I’m being confronted with some cryptogram that needs to be decoded, which is fun, sometimes, and then again sometimes not. It can begin to feel more like a math problem than a poem. And feeding my complex still: rarely do I feel so inspired to write fiction as when I am reading a poem.

Am I the only one that feels that way? That is: confused?

Anyway, in light of these thoughts, I thought I’d share some of my favorite poems. Read more »

This week: the J.D. Salinger tizzy resurfaces (um, in a funny way), Sarah Palin’s tips for writing a book, and a Twilight parody, all after the jump. Read more »