Erratic Fire Erratic Passion

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion is a collection of found poems composed of the words of professional athletes. The content of post-game interviews and sports chatter is so often meaningless, if not insufferable, and yet there are athletes like Metta World Peace who transcend lame clichés and rote patter, who use language in surprising ways, who can be funny and shocking and insightful and alarmingly sincere — pure poetry. Muhammad Ali offered dazzling displays of lexical wizardry, and Allen Iverson’s infamous “practice” rant shifted the post-game press conference from the banal to the absurd. This book is a celebration of these rare and exceptional moments. Various poetic forms and line-breaks highlight — or, in the words of Deion Sanders, “deem to set a candor on” — the sophisticated, sublime, and surprising performances of language made by professional athletes.

Jessica Hopper's music criticism has earned her a reputation as a firebrand, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music but the culture around it. With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing, this book documents the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption. The book journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl's empowering insurgence, decamps to Gary, IN, on the eve of Michael Jackson's death, explodes the grunge-era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love, and examines emo's rise. Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music. The pieces in The First Collection send us digging deep into our record collections, searching to re-hear what we loved and hated, makes us reconsider the art, trash, and politics Hopper illuminates, helping us to make sense of what matters to us most.

In a purgatory at the banks of the Hiwasee River in Southeastern Tennessee, two teenagers—the garrulous John Stone and the young Jenny Evenene—barrel through an endless night in a Firebird Trans Am. Jenny wakes each morning, the same morning, and chronicles the events of her final day, her memory reaching back into the recesses of mythical time, recollecting cosmogonies, eschatologies, and metamorphoses that mingle with the details of her violent end. As the two heroes drive through the night, drinking cold American beer and listening to the soothing tunes of the country music station, the dramatis personae of the process of decomposition encroach upon them from the darkness beyond the headlights: the turkey vultures that soar above them, baited by decaying corpses, are at once the successors of the sacred buzzard whose talons first massaged the earth into being and the double of the screaming chicken emblazoned on the hood of the Firebird, which is itself at once the illustrious automobile of teenage dreams, vehicle of transmigrating souls, and ancient phoenix, millennial sigil of the sun, of biochemical resurrections, and Heraclitean thunderbolt who steers all things.

38 pieces that will be remembered for seasons to come For 25 years, sports journalists south of the border have been collected in best-of anthologies. With Best Canadian Sports Writing, editors Stacey May Fowles and Pasha Malla offer a long overdue rejoinder from the North, showcasing top literary sports writing from diverse homegrown talent. This extraordinary anthology of recent writing mixes columns and long-form journalism, profiles and reportage, new voices and well-known favourites such as Stephen Brunt, Rachel Giese, Eric Koreen, Morgan Campbell, and Cathal Kelly. The assembled pieces offer polished prose, unusual perspectives, and rare insight into their subjects, whether itÕs a Filipino basketball league in the Yukon, the rise and fall of ski ballet, or a field trip to the Mexican hometown of the JaysÕ Roberto Osuna. With its many voices and approaches, Best Canadian Sports Writing expands the genre into more democratic and conversational territory, celebrating the perspectives of both fans and experts alike. These remarkable pieces offer lasting insight that, like sport itself, excites, inspires, and never fails to reveal the truth about ourselves.

For half of the twentieth century, there were two superpowers in the world and a gulf of silence between them. Knowledge of Russian culture was based on propaganda and rumour, and their knowledge of the West was no better. When the Soviet Union fell, Russians began to travel to America more regularly, and what they discovered was a very different place to the one they had imagined, but, at the same time, not exactly the one that Americans think they know. This collection of beautifully written and entertaining literary essays by a wide range of Russian writers - young and old, funny and sombre, angry and celebratory, many being translated for the first time - offers readers a unique chance to see Americans in a whole new light, to question how the American dream stands up to the American reality, and to experience the wit and generosity of today's Russian writers.

This book is the most personal work Devendra Banhart has ever done, more so than any album.

Featuring some of Russia's most prestigious post-Soviet writers, Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia portrays the range of aesthetics and subject matter faced by a generation that never knew Communism. Few countries have undergone more radical transformations than Russia has since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories in Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia present twenty-two depictions of the new Russia from its most talented young writers. Selected from the pages of the top Russian literary magazines and written by winners of the most prestigious literary awards, most of these stories appear here in English for the first time.

What do the punk singer Henry Rollins, the Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa, the American authors Tobias Wolff, Tayari Jones, and George Saunders, the Canadian writer Sheila Heti, and the Russian poet Polina Barskova have in common? At some point they all studied the art of writing deeply with someone. The nearly seventy short essays in A Manner of Being, by some of the best contemporary writers from around the world, pay homage to mentors--the writers, teachers, nannies, and sages--who enlighten, push, encourage, and sometimes hurt, fail, and limit their protégés. There are mentors encountered in the schoolhouse and on farms, in NYC and in MFA programs; mentors who show up exactly when needed, offering comfort, a steadying hand, a commiseration, a dose of tough love. This collection is rich with anecdotes from the heartfelt to the salacious, gems of writing advice, and guidance for how to live the writing life in a world that all too often doesn't care whether you write or not. Each contribution is intimate and distinct--yet a common theme is that mentors model a manner of being. Selections include: Arthur Flowers on John O'Killens James Franco on Harmony Korine Mary Gaitskill on an Ann Arbor bookstore owner Noy Holland and Sam Lipsyte on Gordon Lish Tayari Jones on Ron Carlson Henry Rollins on Hubert Selby Jr. Rodrigo Rey Rosa on Paul Bowles George Saunders on Douglas Unger and Tobias Wolff Christine Schutt on Elizabeth Hardwick Tobias Wolff on John L'Heureux . . . and many more