Phillip Lopate talks about his new book and Susan Sontag at the Barnes and Noble blog Unabashedly Bookish.

Join the discussion here.

Click here to watch and listen to this wonderful conversation on the nature of brotherhood and the cultural impact of Susan Sontag.

Princeton’s Annan Professor of English Susan Stewart is one of seven authors honored with a 2009 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Read the announcements from Princeton University and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Learn about Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini, translated by Susan Stewart.

Keep your flashlights handy.  Last month’s Earth Hour, which saw cities  dim their lights across the globe, may be the harbinger of darker times ahead.  And this is a good thing.

In New York, Earth Hour participants included such iconic night-sights as the Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge, and the United Nations.  Although the savings were more symbolic than significant–about $102 for the UN–they helped cast a figurative spotlight on a positive trend.  For ecological and economic reasons, the current recession is prompting businesses and individuals to turn down the wattage and pump up the publicity on their “green” accomplishments.  As The Times has reported (“Efficiency’s Mark: City Glitters a Little Less,” November 2008), more “blank” spaces are sprouting in the skyline, and fewer office towers blaze in boastful disregard for the cost.  Darkness is in.

Princeton’s recent publication of Franz Kafka: The Office Writings has certainly inspired some thoughtful and interesting reviews. But this one, in particular, by a critic named Ben Kafka (that’s right), published in the April/May issue of Bookforum may take the cake. Read the review on Bookforum’s website here. Be sure to check out the first paragraph…

FRANZ KAFKA:The Office Writings edited by Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg, and Benno Wagner, has been in the news recently. Read Alexander Provan’s thoughtful round-up of recent Kafka books, including this one, in The Nation. In addition, Eric Banks reviews the book in the Barnes & Noble Review.

Andrei Codrescu, Romanian poet, NPR commentator, and author of the forthcoming Princeton volume The Posthuman Dada Guide, has written about dada in the classroom over at InsideHigherEd.com. Specifically, an intriguing assignment in which he asked his students to write a poem on fruit… literally on fruit. In the photo to the right, you’ll note Andrei is holding a grapefruit upon which a student has inscribed a poem.

Andrei also visited Princeton University Press in November and sat down with Editor in Chief Brigitta van Rheinberg to discuss dada and the posthuman life.

Photo: Andrei Codrescu holding a poetic grapefuit. Photo courtesy of Melanie Jones

I Sing the Candidate Electric

By Michael Robertson

Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples

By now, the comparisons of Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy have become routine: the youth, the charisma, the idealism, the eloquence. But there is another great American small-d democrat with whom Obama shares even more resemblances: Walt Whitman.

The Walt Whitman most Americans are familiar with may not seem to have much in common with a youthful African-American politician. In the popular imagination Whitman is the Good Gray Poet, a benign figure with one of those big only-in-the-19^th-century beards, author of the tamely patriotic verses “I Hear America Singing” and “O Captain! My Captain!”