I had an interesting conversation with a representative from the Palestinian Authority yesterday at the Rafah border terminal. He asked not to be named, but what he had to say was in such broad circulation that it doesn’t really belong to one person anyway.

The man was from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Social Affairs, and he was from Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. He said that all of the aid pouring in from all of the Arab countries isn’t really to help the people of Gaza, but rather to keep Hamas in the fight.

The man held special contempt for Qatar, a country he suspects of desiring Saudi Arabia’s position in a new world order headed by Iran. Iran needs a strong Hamas to keep Israel locked in a retrogressive cycle of wars and militarism. Qatar wants Iran to lead the Middle East into the twenty-first century and wants to ride Persian coattails to an increased share of authority in regional politics, especially as they relate to the global energy market.

Interesting perspective—but take it with more than a few grains of salt. The man also echoed something I’ve heard often, something that flies in the face of regional neighbors’ phlegmatic statements: “Egypt is the only country that is helping the Palestinian people.”

A few months back in The Sunday Times, the controversy-prone British journalist Rod Liddle wondered: “Has the reputation of any novelist fallen quite so far and so quickly as that of John Updike?” In answer to this question, Liddle compares Updike’s literary stock to that of fellow mid-century solipsists Philip Roth and Saul Bellow (though, interestingly, not Norman Mailer). The rest of the piece then swerves off into a discussion of sex in literature, arguing that Updike’s 1968 novel Couples “has a good claim to being the first mainstream up-market novel that really did sex, the first novel for the middle-class mass market to have given sex a good seeing to.” Now, I don’t see nothing wrong with a little literary bump and grind and, if I could make out what he is arguing, I might even agree with Liddle’s thesis. But to my mind, the question of Updike’s falling reputation is far more interesting.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said famously (and perhaps apocryphally) that writers seeking to secure their reputations should aim to please the housewives of today, the college professors of twenty years from now, and the high school students of the next century. As sardonically as this maxim may have been intended, it does a tidy job of slicing up the various categories of readers in this country: those who read for pleasure, those who read for a living, and those who read because they are forced to. And the formula certainly has worked for Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby was a bestseller in its own day, placed second on the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century, and is one of the top ten most read books in American high schools. In the absence of a literary stock market (or any other solid measure of literary reputation) Fitzgerald’s formula is the best means of gauging a writer’s current and future reputation.

Updike has traditionally fared quite well among those proverbial housewives of today, the pleasure-reading first draft of reputation. His Rabbit series won two Pulitzer Prizes, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and was a close runner up to Beloved in the New York Times’ recent survey, which asked 125 prominent writers and editors to name the best book of American fiction in the past twenty five years. Even recent clunkers such as The Widows of Eastwick scurry up bestseller lists like eager squirrels while garnering praise from book reviewers and readers alike. His short stories and book reviews appear in the New Yorker with shocking regularity and he has won almost every prize available to American writers. So where’s the reputation problem?

As those persnickety proverbial college professors begin looking back on the late twentieth century, Updike’s reputation has begun to suffer. Perhaps his patrician earnestness makes him an easy target. Perhaps he truly is overrated. In any case, Updike has been subject to some particularly brutal takedowns in the past fifteen or so years. In a 1996 piece in the Times Literary Supplement, Gore Vidal wrote that Updike’s work shows an “ignorance of history and politics and people unlike himself: in this he is a standard American and so typical of what (former) Vice-President Agnew once called the greatest nation in the country.” David Foster Wallace calls him “both chronicler and voice of probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV.” And in his new book, How Fiction Works, fellow New Yorker critic James Woods takes Updike to task for his floppy prose, saying that his overwrought descriptions “freeze detail into a cult of itself.” But perhaps it is unfair to judge a writer on the basis of potentially jealous and otherwise-biased contemporaries.

How will Updike’s reputation fare in the future? No one can know what the high school English teachers of the future will enjoy reading. But it’s hard to imagine a world in which Rabbit Angstrom replaces Jay Gatsby as the Great American protagonist. Updike’s best chances probably lie in the upper-level literature seminars of the next century. Rabbit Angstrom could make a good example of mid 20th century white male suburban angst. Or perhaps Couples will be taught as an illustration of 1960s sexual mores. But when you consider that Updike’s novels will be elbowing for syllabus space with Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Michael Chabon, and Cormac McCarthy, it’s hard to see him faring very well.

Mike Chasar over at “Poetry and Popular Culture” has valiantly taken on the complicated evolution of the final line of Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright.” As Mike notes, the poem first appeared in VQR in 1942 with the final line “Such as she was, such as she might become” but appeared later that year, in the book A Witness Tree, with the final line “Such as she was, such as she would become.” And the poem appeared that way ever after—up until Frost recited it at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.

Here’s where things get confusing. Official transcripts of the inauguration show that Frost changed the final line to: “Such as she was, such as she will become.” I say “official transcripts,” because they were prepared in advance of the event. Okay, I know, I know. The famous story is that Frost couldn’t read his poem “Dedication” from the faint transcript and launched into “The Gift Outright.” That’s kind of true; it’s kind of not. Here’s the full story…

In early December 1960, Kennedy called Frost personally to ask him to write a poem for the inauguration. Jay Parini, in Robert Frost: A Life, describes the scene beautifully:

The poet quickly dismissed the president-elect’s notion: “Oh, that could never happen,” he said. Kennedy followed with another suggestion: How about his reading “The Gift Outright,” changing the last line from “such as she would become” to “such as she will become,” making it a bit more optimistic and emphatic. “I suppose so,” Frost responded, hesitantly. Even a president-elect should not tamper with his work.

But Frost agreed—and even tipped off reporters in advance. He told Thomas G. Smith, a reporter for the Washington Evening Star, on December 19, 1960 (more than a month before the actual inauguration):

I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m going to change that word to “will” at Mr. Kennedy’s suggestion. I think it’s a good idea. I’m all for it. Nobody’s ever changed a word before, but I’m willing to do it.

In the month that followed, however, Frost decided to take a whack at writing a new poem after all, as a surprise—to everyone. He didn’t tell the president-elect, his handlers, nobody. He figured it would be okay, because he would read “Dedication” as a preface then read “The Gift Outright” as asked. Sure, why not, right?

So when Frost stepped to the podium with the words, “First a dedication,” a noticeable look of confusion rippled through the assembled dignitaries. Frost started in, but he couldn’t read his typescript and fumbled for a couple of minutes before giving up. “This was to be a preface to a poem I can say to you without seeing it,” he finally declared. “The poem goes like this . . .” And off he went on “The Gift Outright.”

But when he got to the final line, Frost—perhaps flustered, more likely grandstanding—didn’t read the line quite the way Kennedy had suggested. Instead, he recited: “Such as she was, such as she would become, has become, and I—and for this occasion let me change that to—what she will become.” All the newspapers and official programs reprinted the line simply as “such as she was, such as she will become,” because that was what the transcript said—and was what Frost was supposed to say.

The agony of what is unfolding in Gaza cannot be contained in a sentence or two or four, least of all by me.  Yet a recent article in The Guardian notes that as an extension of a long and troubled history, both Palestinian and Israeli writers have turned to poetry as an outlet in the midst of conflict. And of all of the poems that have filled the gap when the structure and rules of prose fall short, this one is hard to forget.
 

Wildpeace
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)  

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

That’s by Yehuda Amichai (and translated by Chana Bloch), and can be found in The Selected Poetry Of Yehuda Amichai.

RAFAH, EGYPT—On Monday evening, Egypt sent twenty-five ambulances from the Ministry of Health and Population, each staffed by a medic and driver, to hospitals in the town of Khan Yunis, some twenty kilometers from the border crossing at Rafah. I spoke with the ambulance crews before their journey.

Egyptian ambulances prepare to cross the border at Egypt’s Rafah terminal to retrieve patients from Gaza.

Ahmed Hamza, 25, from Suez, denied any concern for his safety, claiming that he was “very angry, very sad,” and “happy to be able to help my Muslim brothers.” I have come to expect such statements of stoicism from volunteers entering Gaza, especially Muslim Arabs, who began entering in increasing numbers over the weekend.

On Saturday, I asked a group of Arab doctors—who were waiting on a Gaza Bus Company bus to cross the border—whether they had fears about Israeli air strikes or getting caught in the crossfire between Hamas and the IDF. Safety “is not a question for Muslims,” said Dr. Mohammad Al-Khalef, a neurosurgeon from Amman, Jordan. “If we come back, good. If we die, then we go to paradise.”

Dr. Ahmed Abd El-Aziz also denied fear. But Abd El-Aziz preferred tongue-in-cheek irreverence. “I believe in destiny,” he said, straight-faced. “If I am in Cairo, I may get hit by a car.” Abd El-Aziz’s joke brought a smile to my face—I myself have seen my life flashing in the busted-out headlights of more than a few Cairo cabs.

Still, I couldn’t help suspecting that the ambulance drivers and doctors with whom I was speaking were more afraid—and less sure of their “call to duty”—than any of them was willing to let on. I’ve been in that driver’s seat before—I know how the stomach excels at tying itself into knots, how adrenaline surges just before a rush into the unknown. Nausea is the closest companion to that brand of excitement, as even the most ideologically sure-footed soldiers and medics will tell you.

I’ve come to count on Dr. Ahmed Al-Wahab, one of Al-Arish Hospital’s chain-smoking directors, for honest statements about Egypt’s role in the Gaza conflict and about the morale of his staff. When others equivocate, he cuts through the bull. I asked Al-Wahab to tell me why the drivers wouldn’t come clean about their fears, preoccupations, doubts.

Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Ahmed arrives at the Rafah border terminal with head-to-toe burns yesterday.

“If you want to know how they really feel,” he said, gazing over my shoulder, “look at that driver behind you.” The driver—seated in the cab of his ambulance, awaiting the order to roll through the gate—was poring over his Qu’ran, a miniature version, encased in a zipper-pouch. EMTs around him joked and passed out cigarettes, but this driver was getting his head in the game. “He believes in his work,” said Al-Wahab, “but he also believes he needs to prepare to meet Allah.”

The Egyptian ambulance crews who entered Gaza on Monday evening were not volunteers. They came to Rafah from all over Egypt under orders from the Ministry of Health and Population. I asked them if they had any training about what to do if their convoy was hit by Israeli ordinance. Did they know how to react? Whether they should advance out of the kill zone, retreat, or stay in place? Had they received the training necessary to deal with combat trauma?

“As of today, we haven’t received any training like that,” admitted Ahmed Abu Sid, 30, an EMT from Alexandria.

Thankfully, all of the ambulances returned safely to Egyptian territory late Monday evening. The convoy successfully retrieved some forty-two patients from Gazan hospitals.

Mohammad Arafat, a representative of the Palestinian Authority in Egypt who helped coordinate Monday’s ambulance convoy, said he expects more ambulances will deploy to Gaza in the coming days.

Their safety is in no way guaranteed.

Readers of VQR will remember Elliott Woods’s fantastic story from our Fall issue about the after-effects of the Mosul chow hall bombing. Woods is now in Egypt, where he was working to gain access to Gaza for an upcoming story for us when the current conflict there broke out. As the fighting continues, we will be posting periodic dispatches from Woods here on the blog, along with Elliott’s photographs. —Ed.

A father and son look on from a hilltop on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border terminal as Israeli jets bomb Rafah City, Gaza, on January 9.

A steady stream of ambulances arrived at Al-Arish Hospital on Sunday, transporting severely wounded Palestinians from the Rafah border terminal between Egypt and Gaza. The trip from the Rafah terminal to nearby Al-Arish, Egypt, takes about an hour—but it can take up to three days for Palestinian ambulances to reach the Egyptian border, even from hospitals in Gazan Rafah, just three kilometers away.

Fear of Israeli bombs and tank shells prevents Palestinian ambulance from delivering patients to Egypt in large numbers. “We have no way to protect ourselves,” said Dr. Bilal Jomah, a Gazan trauma physician who works on the Palestinian ambulances. The International Red Cross has accused Israel of blocking medical assistance after forces fired on aid workers, killing two.

Dr. Jomah’s ambulance crew delivered twenty-year-old Ahmed Asfour into Egyptian hands on Saturday afternoon. Asfour and his two brothers sustained severe abdominal and cardiovascular trauma when their home was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

Infection is a major concern of Gazan doctors and the Egyptian physicians who receive their patients. Depleted supply stores, electricity outages, and water shortages make it difficult for Gazan hospitals and ambulances to maintain sterility in operating rooms and ambulances, and the deep tissue wounds caused by explosions are highly infection-prone.

“With explosions there is massive destruction of muscle,” said Dr. Ahmed El-Aziz, an orthopedic surgeon from Cairo University Hospital. “Tissue dies and infection sets in. The condition is life threatening, not limb threatening.” Dr. El-Aziz crossed into Gaza on Friday evening with a group of eleven doctors from Arab countries.

Volunteer physicians are trickling into Gaza slowly. Only thirty-eight doctors—all Arab—have entered since Friday, and none entered on Wednesday or Thursday. Hundreds of volunteers have placed their names on a waiting list at Rafah, and some have been waiting for more than a week.

Khaled Atteyah, coordinator of the Rafah terminal, says that physicians and aid are allowed to cross whenever the security situation allows, a vague statement considering that the dull thud of bombs can be heard even during the daily ceasefire, which is supposed to take place between the hours of 1 PM and 3 PM according to an agreement between Hamas and Israel reached last Wednesday.

Anas Abd El-Aziz, 15, arrives Sunday at Al-Arish Hospital in Egypt with cranial hemorrhaging, the result of shrapnel from an Israeli air strike in Rafah, Gaza.

Dr. Tarek El-Mahdawy, Secretary of Health Affairs in North Sinai, Egypt, says Egyptian facilities have been specially equipped to care for up to three thousand Palestinian cases, but scores are dying before they can get to the border. As of late Sunday afternoon, only 260 patients had been transferred to Egypt.

At the Rafah terminal, lines of ambulances stand idling from daybreak to dusk. Dozens of jumpsuit-clad EMTs wait in the shade, smoking and chatting. The listlessness is unsettling—there is a war going on less than five miles away. Middle Eastern countries—especially Syria and Iran—have criticized Egypt’s response to the Gaza crisis harshly, but Egyptian doctors insist they’re doing all they can. “It’s just political games,” said Dr. El-Mahdawy. “The others are talking, we are working.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Dr. Mohammad El-Desoky, who has been volunteering at Al-Arish Hospital for the past twelve days, is less certain about Egypt’s response to the Israeli attacks. “We haven’t done anything for the Palestinian people for the past thirty years,” he said. “This job we’re doing now, any country could do it.”

On Thursday, June 9, The Colbert Report featured Lawrence Lessig, law professor, founder of Creative Commons, advocate for copyright reform, and evangelist for what he terms the “hybrid/mash-up economy,” a system that permits commercial ventures to benefit from and contribute to an open exchange for creative content unencumbered by traditional copyright restrictions. The episode re-aired last night, and the web site of The Colbert Report now features a notice, complete with the logo for Lessig’s new book, Remix, stating that his publisher, Penguin, has requested that Remix be removed from the site.

Throughout Lessig’s appearance, Colbert ably poked fun at the writer’s ideas while also showing that the Report relies on many of the same notions advanced in the book: the cultural value of parodic and derivative works; adding economic and cultural value to existing works and being able to profit from it; opening up culture to the kind of democratic, participatory level available before the advent of recorded music and now championed by Wikipedia and Flickr’s sharing community. As Colbert mentioned, he often launches “green screen challenges” and other events that solicit audience members to create parodic, YouTube-style works based on existing footage (such as news footage of John McCain’s notoriously dry speech in New Orleans on the night Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination). Colbert, in turns, shows a selection of these videos, adds value to them by contributing his own wit and commentary, and profits by marketing and presenting them to a wide audience.

Offering this dichotomy as something other than what it actually is and claiming ignorance of any distinction is the sort of obvious hypocrisy that forms one of Colbert’s most common humorous tropes. It’s also what makes him devastatingly effective. He may seem like a Bill O’Reilly moved to the right of Attila the Hun, but as long as Colbert claims ignorance of what he’s doing as being anything but sincere, and is funny while doing it, it’s difficult to call his bluff. But the satirical overtones of the show, its overwrought diction, its occasionally beyond-the-pale claims (like the repeated warning that bears are a mortal threat to society), and its being clearly plugged into the cultural zeitgeist—employing YouTube videos, having its own vibrant, video-heavy web site, writing commentary deftly derived from a wide selection of news and blogs stories—show that Colbert is as on the cutting edge of what is hip and relevant as any show host out there. Or rather, he attempts to define popular taste, acting as a discerning, value-adding filter for the great hordes of user-generated content out there, just like any Web 2.0 brand that draws curated selections from the bottomless well of mass culture, user-generated and otherwise (see: Huffington Post, Drudge, The Daily Beast, Yahoo News, Gawker Media, innumerable other small entities and blogs, many with thousands of followers). Of course, his character would have us believe that he’s rather oblivious to this fact, even while he winks at us from behind the mask.

So, in the end, is the notice of the removal of Lessig’s video a small, ironic joke, courtesy of Lessig, Penguin, and The Colbert Report? (Likely so, as both the full episode and a clip of Lessig’s appearance are still available on the site.) After all, an advocate of shared culture and easing copyright protections has presented his book, copyrighted and sold by a corporation that profits from extended copyright protections, on a TV show that in turn is owned by a corporation, Viacom, that has vociferously guarded its ability to profit from displaying its own videos online by suing YouTube. But, adding another layer of complexity, the host of one of Viacom’s most popular shows routinely satirizes his supposed corporate overlords and subtly encourages his devoted, creative, technologically plugged-in fan base to create derivative works based on his show material and to post them online. Head exploding yet? The Daily Show has provided on-point, hilarious satire about this Möbius-like web of connections. (Lessig has commented about Viacom, saying that they’re open to remixes but want to protect the content of full episodes.)

The final irony—which all adds up to a sort of extended commentary that could be called Colbert’s buried editorial line—is that Stephen Colbert is exactly what Lawrence Lessig wants and tries to defend. That’s why he’s on the show. Colbert often, as described above, creates, adds to, and derives economic value from others’ cultural works (though generally skewed towards the pop cultural side of the spectrum). He is part of the Creative Commons-inspired culture model in which disparate groups can come together, collaborate on work, profit from it, and relinquish it to others so that they may have the same opportunities. Many, though perhaps not most, of the 70 percent of kids who illegally download media do the same thing. But of course, the added genius of Colbert is that he would rather us think he doesn’t know that. It’s more clever—and more entertaining—if he appears to be a contrarian, reactionary, right-wing doofus while still tapping into these cultural movements. So when Colbert pulled out a Sharpie pen, began writing and drawing all over Lessig’s book, and joked that he was “adding value” to it, he knew exactly what he was doing. He, by virtue of his celebrity and marking up a book, added value to the existing work—and Lessig agreed and supported him. Certainly the book would fetch more on eBay than its $25.95 cover price. 

But is Lessig, by virtue of relying on a major corporate publisher like Penguin, able to follow his own mantra? He’s said that his book will be available through a Creative Commons license, but Bloomsbury Academic says that Penguin has locked up electronic publication rights through May. If you crack open a copy of “Remix,” you’ll find a familiar sight: ”Copyright Lawrence Lessig, 2008. All rights reserved.”

Nigerian novelist Dr. Elechi Amadi, perhaps best known for his novel “The Concubine,” was kidnapped in his country’s Niger River Delta region Monday night. But several African news outlets are reporting that Amadi was released without a ransom being paid. Interestingly, Bloomberg News is calling Amadi a “novelist and retired army captain,” although Amadi is certainly best known as a writer and cultural figure in Nigeria. The BBC noted in their report that Amadi is chairman of the state scholarship board, perhaps contributing to making him a target.

The Niger River Delta is rife with poverty, environmental degradation, kidnappings, and violence, with various militant groups fighting for greater rights and against injustices committed by the national government and foreign oil companies, who have long dominated the resource-rich delta. For an excellent primer on the challenges facing the area and its people, consider reading John Ghazvinian’s “The Curse of Oil,” which appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of VQR. I remember reading it before I was affiliated with VQR, and the piece has stuck with me ever since. Given that Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and among the top five importers of oil to the United States, it’s especially worthwhile to become informed about some of the troubles afflicting the continent’s most populous nation.

Here’s a bit from Ghazvinian’s article:

The Niger Delta is made up of nine states, 185 local government areas, and a population of 27 million. It has 40 ethnic groups speaking 250 dialects spread across 5,000 to 6,000 communities and covers an area of 27,000 square miles. This makes for one the highest population densities in the world, with annual population growth estimated at 3 percent. About 1,500 of those communities play host to oil company operations of one kind or another. Thousands of miles of pipelines crisscross the mangrove creeks of the Delta, broken up by occasional gas flares that send roaring orange flames into the already hot, humid air. Modern, air-conditioned facilities sit cheek-by-jowl with primitive fishing villages made of mud and straw, surrounded with razor wire and armed guards trained to be on the lookout for local troublemakers. It is, and always has been, a recipe for disaster.

Honoring the best writing to appear in our pages in the past year, we’re excited to announce the winners of VQR’s annual writing prizes for 2008.

The Emily Clark Balch Prize for Short Fiction:
Kanishk Tharoor for “Tale of the Teahouse” (Summer 2008 issue).

Kanishk’s story explores the tragic parallels between our current moment and the thirteenth century. In “Tale of the Teahouse,” the citizens of Baghdad prepare for the invasion of another foreign army, the Khan’s, and its devastating effect. The prose soars, even as it resonates with historical weight.

Kanishk is an associate editor at openDemocracy.net. His writings on politics and culture have been published in the Guardian Unlimited and YaleGlobal Online and extensively in India, in the Hindu, Times of India, and Telegraph (Calcutta). He currently lives in London.

The Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry:
Todd Boss for four poems in our Fall 2008 issue: “Ruin,” “Advance,” “In the Morning We Found,” and “The Plat Book.”

Todd’s rapid-fire rhymes and hairpin turns of juxtaposition propel us through this sequence of poems that maps the Wisconsin farm where he grew up to the storm that wiped it out.

Todd is the director of External Affairs at the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis and lives in St. Paul with his wife and two children. The four poems we published are from his first full-length collection, Yellowrocket, just out from W. W. Norton.

Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction (co-winners):
Ashley Gilbertson for “The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce” (Fall 2008 issue).
Ashley is an award-winning freelance photographer and author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War (Chicago, 2007). His cover photo for our Fall 2007 issue was selected as one of the “Top 10 Magazine Covers of the Year” by Time magazine.

David J. Morris for “Trophy Town” (Winter 2008 issue).
Dave is a former Marine and author of Storm on the Horizon (Free Press, 2004), an account of the Battle of Khafji in the Gulf War. His essay in our Winter 2007 issue, “The Big Suck,” was chosen for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Dave reports from Ramadi about the remarkable—and largely unexpected—turnaround in what had once been the center of the insurgency. Yet, his article concludes by wondering about the lingering effects the troops when they return to the US. Ashley provides one heartbreaking example of just that—a Marine, Noah Pierce from the Iron Range of Minnesota, who served two tours in Iraq, only to commit suicide on return because he couldn’t cope with the memories of what he had seen and done. Together, they represent both the successes of our military and the toll those victories have exacted.

The Emily Clark Balch Prizes for short fiction and poetry were established in 1955 and the Staige D. Blackford Prize for nonfiction was established in 2003. The awards are chosen by the staff of VQR and each prize includes a monetary award of $1,000 (split between co-winners). Past recipients include Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Robert Olen Butler, Philip Caputo, Hayden Carruth, Carolyn Forché, Donald Hall, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Oliver, and May Sarton. A complete list of past winners is available here. Congrats to all the winners!

1. Poet and MeFite John Paul Davis recaps a poet geek-fest on Metafilter:

Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky (re)posted Thomas Hardy‘s "The Darkling Thrush" to Slate. Discussion ensued, and became very lively when National Book Award winner Mark Doty observed that the poem contains an overt homage to an earlier poem by Keats. Guggenheim fellow Mark Halliday, MacArthur fellow Jim Powell and Annie Finch chime in. An opportunistic Billy Collins (also a former Poet Laureate & Guggenheim fellow) even showed up, attracted by the discussion of a “bird poem.” A fascinating look at some of the finest American poets geeking out over poems that were hits before your mother was born.

2. VQR Young Reviewers Contest winner Emily Wilkinson tells the National Book Critics Circle what she’s reading (M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation and The Simon Critchley’s The Book of Dead Philosophers, among other things.) And that’s just a week after finishing her dissertation. If I’d just finished my dissertation, I’d read nothing more challenging than the backs of Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes and old Garfield collections for a year. Clearly, a doctorate is not in my future.

3. Hank Paulson will be bailing out the publishing industry, or so claims Julian Gough on his behalf in the Times:

In these difficult times, leadership—and sacrifice—must start at the top. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and I are agreed it is imperative we take the bad books out of the system, and slowly work our way through these toxic assets. Yes, it will be painful; it will be difficult; but at times like this, the government must step in and perform its duty, as reader of last resort.

4. William Saffire spells out the difference between profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, and obscenities, something the media had to puzzle through when trying to explain the sins of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

5. Heather Moore is making poetry out of Blogger CAPTCHAs. “Misms, bionobte. / Poogisp percut stind ismst, / Klege.” (Via Boing Boing)