BURN PILE: C.S. Lewis's T.S. Eliot impression, Ploughshares' memoir tips, more

Eliot_CutBank_CC "My soul is a windowless facade." In a Poetry Foundation article about C.S. Lewis' ill-fated poetry efforts, Laura Mallonee writes that Lewis and friends once tried to prank T.S. Eliot with a mock-Modernist poem. Ah, if only Old Possum had penned a Narnia homage...

Nothing says "memoir material" like the holidays. With that in mind, Ploughshares offers a few structural recommendations pulledfrom a number of recent memoirs and essays, from Andre Dubus III's Townie to Justin St. Germain's Son of a Gun to JoAnn Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter."

Bragging rights: In its year-end letter, Asymptote flaunted a few highlights from 2013. Our favorite? A map that lets curious readers seek out published pieces by region of focus. One wonders how other journals might review their own areas of interest by reviewing a geography of their concerns.