A few interesting titles…

I was playing outside with my sons most of this weekend–and I’ve got sunburn to prove it. For me, it gets hard to do any reading at the beginning of…

I was playing outside with my sons most of this weekend--and I've got sunburn to prove it. For me, it gets hard to do any reading at the beginning of summer, because I feel like I've got to be out doing stuff. However, there always comes that point when I feel like I need to read--or else! So, I was pleased to see two possible titles for me to check out when that point hits this summer.

* Poetry: Read It When You're Drunk, by Dwight Garner from The New York Times Paper Cuts blog, reviews Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry, edited by Dennis O' Driscoll.

* A long flowering, by Jonathan Pitts from The Baltimore Sun, takes a look at the friendship between poets Elizabeth Spires and the late Josephine Jacobsen, as well as the "chapbook" Spires published of Jacobsen's work. Jacobsen once served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress--the position now known as U.S. Poet Laureate.

*****

And as long as I'm leading you to those titles, I guess I should share a great collection I recently read (because even when I'm not reading I am still reading): Queen for a Day, by Denise Duhamel (University of Pittsburgh Press). In this collection of selected poems, Duhamel includes some of her finest work from her early collections (through 2001, I believe). If you can find it, check it out.

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.