The annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) convention is being held this coming week in my home town of Portland, Oregon. I’ll try to post daily through the week my local observations of the main event and its various outlier happenings. One of those happenings is the concurrent publication of “Befrois the Book”…
What a Reader Wants
“To be sure of getting something above the average,” Edmund Wilson tells us, in his disparaging take on the genre, “Why Do People Read Detective Stories” (October 14, 1944), “I waited for new novels by writers who are particularly esteemed by connoisseurs.” But Wilson is repeatedly disappointed, in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, in Agatha Christie,…
Born to Read
Born to read. How boring is that? You could have been: Born to Be Wild Born to Be Bad Born to Lose Born in a Trunk Born Again Born Before the Wind Born to Run Rock and roll is the universal elixir the alchemists sought. Most US kids know the formula, share autobiographical characteristics, the…
a bit of lit crit
Word put upon word, drooped Robert Creeley said, or almost said. What Creeley said in his poem “The House” was: Mud put upon mud, lifted Mud is better than Word, but drooped is good.
Rubbing Amber
The new monks like moths gather to the light scree falls into the folds of their feathered skin robes amid foul screens callous bawls window shades pulled down the game glows with electric flames warm and hand wrapped wireless controllers fingers jostle the joysticks.
Tangential Narratives: Notes on Julia Cooke’s “The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba.”
As a child can only be tangential to its parental revolution, what happens when the citizen is a child of the state that follows, the state that insists on adopting parental authority, never relinquishing its hold? The child learns to walk and talk in the surveillance of its parental shadows. Some children learn to escape…
Whorlscope
Whorled weary for this world’s woes worsened by winter’s whistling wicked wishes as worrying as this watch of one’s web life ebb, and if that’s not maudlin enough, sick of this car’s cough, too, its needy changes and fillings, its overheated tantrums, leaks, stalls, and traffic jams, the orange cones and potholes and all ways…
An Impure Primer
A beastly catechism dog eared brown cat drenched frozen green halo. I just kwikzilver looked. Mighty nice mice nook. Opening opinion pending please query queue quorum. Run straight toward universe vast wobbly. Exit your zero.
Song at a Border Crossing
If this be your love come away with us come away. If this be your love steal away with us steal away. If this be your love come free with us come free. And if this be your fear songs smiling ear to ear songs that give no take – unhinge the gate of your…
Feast of Epiphany
Epiphany In the straw burrow farm mice. Get a little closer and you’ll see Nits in baby Jesus’s hair, lice, And a house snake in the olive tree. There’s beer on the breath of the three Sage men sitting under the olive tree, Playing games of cribbage, Ushering in a new age. The pieces are…
