Our Blog has Moved!

We apologize for the recent lack of blog content. In the unannounced interim, we've been moving to a nifty little tumblr, which is now live. Enjoy!

http://sewaneereview.tumblr.com/

 

Faces from your worst literary nightmares...

A digitally rendered composite sketch of Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick

The Composites tumblr takes descriptions of characters from famous books and runs them through a commercially available law enforcement composite sketch software. The result is these terrifying, dead-eyed faces straight out of the uncanny valley. If you really want to scare people this Halloween you may want to ditch that costume of your favorite book character and wear a mask made from their composite sketch. Read more about the project at the Atlantic.

Says former FBI profiler John Douglas: "I’ve interviewed guys in prison who told me they breathed a sigh of relief as soon as they saw the published composite because they realized it looked like any man on the street. It didn’t resemble them enough to trigger an identification." We're breathing a similar sigh.

13 weird books: scabs, carp, fake poultry, and more...

If you've ever looked for books in a thrift store, you know the joy of finding and chuckling at weird books. If you've never had that experience, or even if you have, we've compiled a list of thirteen odd titles so you don't have to search through those dusty shelves to get a giggle or two.


The go-to book for creative goldfish inbreeding.

 We're not really sure what this book could add that the actual experience leaves out.

 

Get a sample of the book's contents by visiting the associated website, Pocket Power.

We actually need this one for our upcoming poultry exhibition. As this picture illustrates, it also comes with the ominous bonus of taxidermy supplies.

Stay tuned for the choose-your-own-adventure sequels, Carp: How to Make Them Love You and Carp: How to Make Them Taste Good.

A comprehensive guide for med-school students, complete with detailed, anatomically accurate illustrations.

  

This book was so pretty we weren't surprised to discover that it's published by McSweeney's. Below is a typically hilarious description of the book from their website.

"For many years the scientific and educational community has wondered and worried about the possibility that semi-sane scholar pretenders would find the means to put out a series of reference books aimed at children but filled with ludicrous misinformation. These books would be distributed through respectable channels and would inevitably find their way into the hands and households of well-meaning families, who would go to them for facts but instead find bizarre untruths. The books would look normal enough, but would read as if written by people who have eaten too many lead-based paint chips. Well, sadly, that day is upon us."

The above illustration comes from a recent study revising the images we typically associate with dinosaurs; the study concluded that dinosaurs were not covered in scales or feathers, but rather amorphous layers of highly absorbent, soft-touch terry cloth with sewn-on buttons for eyes.

The pierogi market is recession proof.

Get in touch with your upper-paleolithic self, get rid of all those pebbles, and decorate your house all at the same time.

That better be a lead apron.

This book was definitely owned by the Dude.

We hope they publish a new edition each year with date ideas adjusted for currency inflation (the ideas, not the one dollar price tag).

Check out more over at Abebooks' weird book room.

Internet Artifacts: getting to know Rebecca Foust

Rebecca Foust is one of the fresh faces in the Sewanee Review in 2013, publishing for the first time in our pages with two poems in our summer issue. We've been getting to know her better by poking around for more of her work.

Below are two videos we unearthed in the course of our search. We also came across an interview she gave to How A Poem Happens explaining the process behind her poem "Altoona to Marin," as well as a feature on Foust in the San Fransisco Poetry Examiner.

Rebecca Foust reading poems from her first book, Dark Card.

Rebecca Foust reading her poem "Wild Swan."

Internet Artifacts: readings by Dawn Potter

We stumbled on some wonderful readings by the poet and critic Dawn Potter, one of our regular contributors. For more of her writing, head to her blog.

Dawn Potter reads the last chapter from her book, Tracing Paradise.

Dawn Potter reads Robert Frost's poem "The Oft-Repeated Dream."

The Leading Edge of Typewriter Technology

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"A typewriter so different, only the alphabet remains the same." That statement may not be true today, but we're still quite taken with the IBM Correcting Selectric III in our offices. We have three Selectrics squatting in various locations, horded like canned food in the face of the apocalypse.

T. S. Eliot's Birthday

"I wish first to define the sense in which I shall use the term 'man of letters.' I shall mean the writer for whom his writing is primarily an art, who is as much concerned with style as with content; the understanding of whose writings, therefore, depends as much upon appreciation of style as upon comprehension of content. This is primarily the poet (including the dramatic poet), and the writer of prose fiction."

 

—T. S. Eliot, "The Man of Letters and the Future of Europe"

Sewanee Review 53.3

Happy birthday to T. S. Eliot!