Ernie Hilbert, an amazing poet and literary critic, edits a daily “poetry newsletter”, which arrives in my mailbox every morning. I just call it “Ernie’s List”. I have been receiving these emails for about 3 years now, and they are one of the constant sources of joy in my life. So I wanted to open up the opportunity to join “the list” to my readers.
Here is what you get, when you subscribe (free) to “Ernie’s List”:
— 2 quotes of the day (one short, one long). The quotes come from from Herodotus to Dolly Parton. From excerpts from The New Criterion to a quote from Kurt Cobain’s journals. These quotes come from his readers (and from Mr. Hilbert himself).
— a Poem a day. Ernie basically knows everything there is to know about poetry. You get Charles Bukowski, you get a Shakespeare sonnet … it runs the gamut. Many of my new favorite poems and poets have come to me from “Ernie’s list”.
— Top 5 Lists. These are sent in by Ernie’s numerous readers (he is pushing 1,000 now). They are hilarious. It could be “Top 5 Ways you Know it is Winter in Minnesota” (which was one of the Top 5s this past week), or they could be “Top 5 quotes from Winston Churchill”. Or “Top 5 drinks made with gin.” Ernie also runs an ongoing “alphabetical Top 5 list”. Top 5 words starting with A, B, C … We are up to F now, I believe.
— An Invaluable fact of the day. These are also hilarious. Today’s was that there is a record for non-stop hiccuping, and that record is something like 68 years. I also learned, through the “invaluable facts”, that if there was a lake large enough to hold it, Saturn would float. You know, completely weird facts that you can pull out of a hat at your next cocktail party and amaze (or annoy) your friends.
— Unbelievable But Real Film Titles. These are also sent in by Ernie’s readers. Today’s “unbelievable but real film title” was Priapism Diary, a film from 1982.
And then occasionally, Ernie will point us to articles he finds interesting, web sites he has discovered, etc. etc.
There are people from all over the world on “Ernie’s List”. My whole family is on it. We discuss it. “Hey, did you see Ernie today?” “Was that your top 5 today on Ernie?” Etc.
If any of you out there are interested in joining “Ernie’s List”, just shoot me an email and I will have him add your email to the List. It is completely confidential, of course. And you get so much value from it, whatever your interest may be. My father says, “I’m in it for the quotes.” So he doesn’t read the poems. I read the poems and the top 5s. I participate feverishly in all of it, sending Ernie quotes, top 5s, top 5 words starting with D. It’s a lot of fun.
Here is Ernie’s stellar biography, if you want to know a bit more about him before you commit:
Ernest Hilbert’s poetry and criticism have appeared in The Boston Review, LIT, Pleiades, The American Scholar, Fence, Slope, and David Stack’s Posterband, among others. He is the editor of nowCulture.com’s biannual print anthology, NC. He is the poetry editor for Random House’s online literary magazine Bold Type. He is also the North American liaison for the Parisian literary magazine Upstairs at Duroc. He holds a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford University, where he earlier completed a Master’s Degree and founded the Oxford Quarterly. He has worked as a contributing editor for Long Shot magazine, and he is also a librettist, with operas staged in New York City.
