the bed was a blues lyric, Patricia Smith the bed was questionable haven for a tangle, a wall of rain designed to rearrange a bended neck it was a suitcase a world-hipped woman had to bounce her hard butt bone on to close, crammed full as it was....  [more] Gulf Coast Blog Click here every Tuesday and Friday as Gulf Coast editors blog about the writing world. And if you want to receive notice of our online updates as they happen, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.   [more] Lite-Brite Clancy Martin "They took me to the psychiatric ward—I’d been there before (I tried to escape, in the night, in my slippers and hospital robe, and failed; I was caught by a nurse, a security guard, and some locking exit doors)—and I sat, most days, with a muscular, startlingly good-looking Irishman (Daniel Day Lewis-style, truly handsome) who, the whole time I was there, spoke only once and never stopped crying. Mostly he cried noiselessly. I never learned his name."   [more] A Roundtable on Fragmentation and the Futility of Genre Classification Eula Biss, Sarah Manguso, Maggie Nelson, Allie Rowbottom "Most writers...wouldn’t dream of suggesting that, say, there is something inherently bad about poetry as a genre. But plenty of respected critics and writers get away with suggesting that there is something inherently inferior—maybe even disgusting and dirty—about memoir."  [more] The Orchard Maggie Shipstead "Jennings has not come to her bed, and he has only left his study for the bathroom. He sleeps on a leather sofa beneath windows that look over the orchard. Every afternoon he soaks his clothes and his chair with sweat, and every night he dries in the window breeze. Salty white tidal rings make halos on the chair’s upholstery. He has stained a dark shadow on the couch."   [more]