The Week We Brought You the World

ACADEMIA – Rage! Betrayal! Spreadsheets! Everyone’s talking about the Poets & Writers MFA rankings. First, the Big Ten won big. (It’s actually the Big Dozen now, but, tradition.) Immediately, things got heated. P&W attempted to explain itself. Slate chimed in, counterintuitively. Even The New Yorker wanted a piece of this. Who doesn’t love a good nerd-fight? As is our wont, we patiently await Danielle Steel’s take on things.

NEW YORK – Speaking of that contrarian Slate 'tude, The Awl’s Choire Sicha takes the free-market libertarian line on the campaign to save St. Mark’s Bookshop. We nevertheless exercise our right to support and circulate the petition.

QATAR – The controversial news network Al Jazeera celebrates its anniversary with a poetry contest. We’re just happy to live in a world where we can enter this and Bill Murray’s poetry contest at the same time.

A KIND OF HYPER-PRIVATE, LUMINOUS WORLD (a/k/a SAN FRANCISCO) - Anne Boyer wrote a pointed essay on photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, motherhood, photo-alteration and other things. Check it out. We think you’ll be glad you did.

EGYPT – As Arab Spring continues apace and sorts out its priorities, the Egyptian poetry scene comes into play.

AUSTRALIA – J.M. Coetzee keeps us entertained with an expansive, sometimes contentious piece on Leo Murray.

PRUSSIA – Apparently ruling the world makes you horny.

CAMELOT – Jackie O had a yen for poetry as well.

THE ‘90s – Before he passed, Allen Ginsberg took a moment to jam with Paul McCartney and Gus Van Sant. The evidence remains on our beloved Ubuweb.

BROOKLYN – Jim Behrle gives us his football picks in the ever-popular haiku format and gets us chuckling.

NASHVILLE – Our pal Cari Wade Gervin interviews Terrance Hayes. Spoilers: David Berman rules. Being a poet is awesome “because you can think about poetry all the time.” Some of us do that regardless.

THE INTERNET – A very cool-sounding Catholic-school pupil answering to Nekochan asks for advice on running a banned-book library out of her locker and receives high-five .gifs all around. Do it to it, Nekochan.

THE BOOK BOOTH – Welcome to the new, economy-sized library.

ALL OVER THE PLACE – Whee! Short attention-span poetry recommendations! All right! Wait! Gotta go! Shiny thing!