UFR Weekly Newsletter #21: The Things We Listen To
David Cotrone
Everyone has a favorite soundtrack, songs working within a narrative to make it all sing, to make it all work. Some movies make up their own and others use them as filler, something to take up space in the background. They’re always important, though. No one ever said the background wasn’t important; if someone did then they were lying.
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Late Arrival: Coney Island, 2008 by Chelsea Biondolilo
Anatomy of A Prayer by Omar Holmon
Chris Vola reviews Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s Hot Teen Slut
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I watched Sideways again last night. I had forgotten how good it was, how well it tips between funny and sad. It’s one of those movies where the ending isn’t really an ending, where no matter what the ending wouldn’t matter. The thing that mattered most was that it got started.
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Cristin saw Chris’s review of her book. She sent a note, saying, “I’m always trying to promote the poets & books I love, and I know how trying it can be to find the right words to honor the poet's process… And so I’m especially honored & humbled by this review, which is so thoughtful, so well-written, so in touch with what I always hoped readers would pick up in the work and yet so inviting & charming in its presentation. I’m grateful.”
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The soundtrack for Sideways is brief and entirely instrumental; it was nominated for an award. In the movie, Paul Giamatti plays the part of a struggling writer. He meets a woman he wants to love and starts talking about the book he can’t get published. When she finds out the title of the book is The Day After Yesterday she looks at him and says, “You mean today?”
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Thanks again for your patience if you’ve submitted work and we’ve accepted it. The world will see it soon, we promise.
Be well,
David