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That web video shows just a few of the happy contributors to the six-word memoir anthology.

Writing anthologies and contests are tricky business. Editors comb through vast amounts of submissions, and it's hard to know what they are thinking. Most recently, Stephen King and Zadie Smith both bemoaned the state of short story submissions. Smith angered plenty of writers in the process. 

This week, Larry Smith (the unrelated founder of Smith Magazine) and Rachel Fershleiser (senior editor at Smith) are our special guests, giving us an inside look at how they created their six-word memoir anthology, Not Quite What I Was Planning.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions (this week, each of our guests get two-and-a-half easy questions). In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:

You must have combed through a bazillion memoirs while editing the six-word memoir book. How did you organize this huge mess of content and make the tough decisions about what to keep and cut? As an editor, which stories grabbed you the most?

Rachel Fershleiser:
Several bazillion, yes. Basically, for months I read through the backend of our submission-software every night and copy-pasted the ones that grabbed my attention into a spreadsheet. Continue reading...

"When I tell people I write about sex, I can see immediately whether their judgment about me has changed in the second it took me to say it. Most of the time, I don’t have time to sit and explain how complex a topic we’re talking about. Now, I can just hand them this book, which asks just as many questions as it answers, and hopefully does what good sex should do: leave you wanting more."

That's Rachel Kramer Bussel explaining a little bit about her writing life. She wrote the Lusty Lady sex column for the Village Voice, and recently edited Best Sex Writing 2008--among other erotic anthologies. You can see her website for that book here.

This kind of focused, jam-packed career brings its own share of scheduling problems, and today she explains how she keeps her writing life balanced.

This is my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog

Rachel Kramer Bussel:
Well, I have to admit I laughed at bit at the last part because my stress level is way high. Continue reading...

Naturally, I've had my eye on Brooklyn Was Mine, an anthology of essays by Brooklyn writers on the borough of dreams. I'd planned to ask for a reading copy, as usual, but actually, I think I'll buy it. I hadn't realized that proceeds from the book are going to Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the non-profit that's fighting the crazy, terrible, eminent-domain Ratner development of the Atlantic Yards (thanks to GalleyCat for the heads up). The Fort Greene Courier has more about the book, and about several readings with contributors happening in the next week or two to raise money and awareness. (Just for the record and because I'm even more steamed about it now, I tried hard to set up a reading at my bookstore for the anthology, but by the time the publicists at Penguin responded to my multiple queries, it was way too late to set a date.)

Coincidentally, I'm currently working through another anthology that benefits a Brooklyn nonprofit. The Book of Other People (also from Penguin), the long-awaited (by me anyway) collection of character sketches edited by Zadie Smith, benefits 826NYC (also known as Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., where I volunteered in a less time-bereft time in my life). There's also a ticketed reading for this one on the 16th; ticket sales also benefit the tutoring center, which is doing really good work (not hurt by having lots of famous friends).

I DID buy this one, for a funny reason: the ALP and I took the train to Boston to see friends over New Year's, and while waiting to meet up with our ride in South Street StationI was so delighted to discover a little independent bookstore that I bought the first book that looked readable -- in this case, the just released BOOP. I guess Barbara's Bestsellers isn't exactly an independent -- they seem to have locations all over the country -- but it's definitely got an indie vibe, and I'm always glad to add to my collection of souvenir bookmarks from my bookstore visits.

Anyway, in addition to stories by my favorites Jonathan Safran Foer, Andrew Sean Greer, Nick Nornby, A.L. Kennedy, Jonathan Lethem, and Smith herself, there is also (drumroll please)... a new story by David Mitchell! I didn't even realize this when I plunked down my cash. A karmic payback for buying a book for a good cause. I recommend you do the same at your local indie bookstore, ASAP.

A few weeks back I purchased a new anthology over in the regular poetry section. I'm not sure if you can completely make out the subtitle to this one, but the book is called The Poets' Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family, compiled by John Lithgow (who, you will recall, is not a professor, although he played one on TV). Let me say this about that: the subtitle? Balderdash. Because Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems, which I reviewed in April is decidedly for the whole family, as are a number of other anthologies for children. And the books put together by Garrison Keillor (Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times) are pretty much as capable of being shared with the family as Lithgow's book. Just so we're clear that I take issue with the phrase "one-and-only" here. The rest of the subtitle is fine.

If you were to read the table of contents, you would think that this 280-page book contained fifty poems, one each by fifty poets (organized alphabetically by author's last name: Matthew Arnold through William Butler Yeats). And while that sounds like the premise and is, in fact, what is on the accompanying CD: 50 poems, 1 each by the poets listed in the book; it is not all that is there.

Each poet is introduced in a family-friendly sanitized kind of way by Lithgow's prose, and then the "featured" poem is introduced. What do I mean by sanitized? Well, Byron is pretty much just referred to as racy, and Lewis Carroll is described as a kindly man who regretted that children had to grow up so quickly, when most people will tell you that he enjoyed the company of little girls and regretted that they had to grow up at all (and not for Peter Pan-like reasons, I think).

After each poem, Lithgow shares his personal response to the poem, including any personal connections he has (after "Birches" by Robert Frost, he shares an anecdote about hanging from a tree by breaking rope when he was a child, for instance. In addition, for each poet, Lithgow provides a sidebar listing five other favorite poems by the poet (with the following exceptions: he lists only 4 additional poems for Byron and Pound, and lists 6 for Coleridge, Herrick and Shakespeare; he also includes lyrics from one song by Wm. S. Gilbert, who gets nothing more).

And for many poets, although certainly not all, a second poem is included. Not that you'd know that from the table of contents, although for the life of me I don't understand the omission. And not that you can readily figure it out from the index because there is not index. I can understand the decision to skip an index because of the way the book's organized. There's no effort at chronology here, it's alphabetized by the poet's surname after all. But that's all the more reason that the second poems should have been listed under the poets' names in the table of contents. And yes, little things like this actually bother me in real life. (For example, the table of contents tells you that William Blake's "The Tyger" is there, but doesn't mention that "The Lamb" is also included. It tells you that Keats's "To Autumn" is in the book, but not that "The Belle Dame Sans Merci" is there as well.)

From time to time, there are text boxes with additional information — a quote from the poet, perhaps, or a definition of a poetic form, or a link to someplace on the internet where you can hear the poet reading their own work.

What can I tell you about Lithgow's choices? Well, many of them are, for want of a better word, obvious, and cause me to think that Lithgow is fond of reading anthologies himself, since so many of his choices are widely-anthologized. Here's a sampling of what's there, most of which you've probably heard before, and many of which are in anthologies (including anthologies for children): "The Tyger" by William Blake, "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonnet 43 ("How do I love thee?") by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, "There is no Frigate like a Book" by Emily Dickinson, Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "To Autumn" by John Keats, "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear, "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, "To a Skylark" by Shelley, "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens, "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by W.C. Williams, "I wandered lonely as a cloud" by Wordsworth, and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by Yeats.

And yet, it's clear to me that Lithgow simply chose to feature some of his favorite poems, because of the occasional unexpected choice — such as the lyrics to "The Nightmare Song" by William S. Gilbert — and because of the decisions he made regarding "what to leave in, what to leave out".* He's included Allen Ginsberg, Hart Crane, Randall Jarrell, Ben Jonson, Philip Larkin, and Andrew Marvell. Don't get me wrong, all of them are excellent poets, but they are not nearly so widely anthologized as some of the others, nor are they as esteemed as some of the poets omitted: Robert Browning, say, or Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath (although their estates are stingy with permissions, so perhaps that was the issue), or Tennyson or Pablo Neruda.

As I mentioned near the top of the post, the book is accompanied by a CD featuring readings of 50 poems, 1 per poet. The readings are each introduced by John Lithgow, who reads several of them himself (and takes on an increasingly obvious mock-English accent in the reading of the Gilbert lyrics). But he managed to get some "friends" to assist. They are Eileen Atkins, Jodie Foster, Gary Sinise, Glenn Close, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Billy Connolly, Robert Sean Leonard, Lynn Redgrave, Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates, and Susan Sarandon. Let me just say that Billy Connolly's reading of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns is spectacular, as is his version of "The Owl and the Pussycat" and, oh hell, everything else he reads. I'd probably like to listen to him read the phone book. I heart Billy Connolly and his voice. But I digress. Jodie Foster's readings are glorious, and so are Susan Sarandon's and Gary Sinise's and Morgan Freeman's and Kathy Bates, well, if you think I'm going to list everyone, then you're close. There's an occasional track that's only so-so ("Annabel Lee" as read by Sam Waterston, for example), but really, the CD is great. Only you should be warned that the CD is in MP3 format, which meant that my stereo balked at playing it, although yours might not. The computer had no such issue.

So, what's my final take on this book? It contains, after all, so many poems that I already have in other anthologies. And the failure to list the supplemental poems, where they exist, is maddening. And yet, I find myself heartily in favor of it for the simple reason that I believe it might actually introduce the joy of poetry to a lot of folks who might not often shop for poetry books, simply because kindly, professorial John Lithgow is smiling at them from the cover, and assuring them that all will be well. Plus, I love the performances on the CD. Plus, I love poetry anthologies myself. And some of the poems I've been telling you are "obvious" choices are ones I've made myself to feature for Poetry Friday posts. (Oh, glass houses!)

The holidays are coming, folks: Chanukah starts on Tuesday night, December 4th, and Christmas is, as ever, on the 25th. Someone you know may like The Poets' Corner as a gift, although if the someone is a child, then consider the Caroline Kennedy book instead. Or if they're particularly young, go with Here's a Little Poem, edited by Jane Yolen.

*"what to leave in, what to leave out" is from "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

In this week’s show: This week’s show is dedicated to my Hawaiian colleagues: Mahalo to my Hawaiian colleagues and friends especially Liana Honda, JoAnn Wong-Kam, Anna Sumida, Alice Kimura, Joyce Ahuna-Ka’ai’ai, Meleanna Meyer, Kathy Wurdem, Avis Masuda, and Malia Chong. This show is dedicated to you! I left Hawaii in awe of your passion, and commitment [...]