Toni M!

Quoted: In this special, four-part reading, Toni Morrison presents a pivotal episode from her new novel, A Mercy. The book explores the repercussions of an enslaved mother's desperate act: she casts off her daughter to save her.

Quoted: academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays.

Quoted: More aspects of Rimbaud are known than can be assimilated: his vastly various, influential and innovative poetry itself; his expressive letters; his scornful and unhesitating permanent abandonment of poetry at the age of 20; the anecdotes of his contemporaries showing him as a drunken, filthy, amoral homosexualteenager who becomes a reserved, hard-working, responsible and respectable (if misanthropic and disgust-ridden) adult merchant and explorer. One would have to be a genius oneself to grasp the full significance of Arthur Rimbaud, or at least have the ability to hold many opposed ideas in one’s mind at the same time and still function fully. Numerous writers have sought to demonstrate their qualifications along these lines by publishing studies of him.

Quoted: Tagore wrote novels, short stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays on political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are among his best-known works. His verse, short stories, and novels, which often exhibited rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation, received worldwide acclaim. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and polymath who modernised Bengali art by rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Two songs from his canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana respectively.

Quoted: things magazine was originally founded in 1994 by a group of writers and historians based at the Victoria & Albert Museum/Royal College of Art in the belief that objects can open up new ways of understanding the world.

Quoted: things has built a reputation as a home for new writing – essays, reviews, short stories and poems – about objects and their meanings. The website contains a weblog, photography galleries, special projects, searchable archives and the occasional on-line only article.

Happy birthday Whitman!

Quoted: Of the day the original daguerreotype was taken, Whitman remembered, "I was sauntering along the street: the day was hot: I was dressed just as you see me there. A friend of mine—Gabriel Harrison (you know him? ah! yes!—he has always been a good friend!)—stood at the door of his place looking at the passers-by. He cried out to me at once: 'Old man!—old man!—come here: come right up stairs with me this minute'—and when he noticed that I hesitated cried still more emphatically...

33rd annual Buenos Aires International Book Fair

Quoted: For all those who love to read, who enjoy getting lost in crowds, who are intrigued by the idea of a powerful espresso after midnight, who loathe being rushed, who get mildly depressed when reading yet another article prophesizing a straight-to-hell future for the printed word -- this is the time and the place for you...

Impressive online magazine. All content is available for free, and it's very easy to navigate. Sections include interviews, poetry, fiction, arts/photography, and links.

This is a great collection of the poems sent out by Knopf for their poem-a-day series. To have a poem and accompanying info e-mailed to you each day in April, here is the link: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/index.pperl

Quoted: In April 2006, Knopf introduced the Poem-a-Day podcast, which featured poets including Kevin Young and James Merrill reading their own poems, as well as Knopf authors such as Joan Didion and Toni Morrison reading work by their favorite poets.