Empty Mirror

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About Lee Watkins

Lee Watkins completed a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, on the subject of Hegel, Deleuze and Guattari. Since then he's been writing about philosophy and literature. He's got a blog at leewatkins.wordpress.com and he's on Twitter @philosophiclee.

Love and the Titanic: Notes on Last Words: The Final Journals of William Burroughs

Lee Watkins

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs

On July 30, 1997, William Burroughs wrote: Reading Titanic by Charles Pellegrino. Page 18. What is an experience if it is not shared? Did it even happen? What he wrote later that day is more … [Read more...]

The Guardian and the Familiar: William S. Burroughs and Cats

Lee Watkins

William S. Burroughs and Cats

“O fiery river “Spread over this American land. “Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt “For what does not pay … “What would you pay Christ to die again?” -- Kenneth Patchen, from “O Fiery … [Read more...]

Junk Nightmares

Lee Watkins

William Burroughs, portrait by Graziano Origa, pen & ink, 1997

William Burroughs was troubled in his childhood by a “fear of nightmares.” The dreams themselves weren’t always so bad. Like when he seemed to wake to find little men playing in a block house he’d … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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