In seventh grade, I was assigned to choose a favorite “famous old person.” As part of a cross-discipline project blending science, social studies, and art, we were to make apple-head dolls of the figures of our choosing and then give a small presentation … [Read more...]
Remembering Federico García Lorca
Ask for lights and bells. / Learn to cross your hands, / to taste the cold air / of metals and of cliffs. A Spanish poet and playwright associated with avant-garde surrealism, Federico García Lorca was born on June 5, 1898, near Granada, Spain. He … [Read more...]
Is Southern Art a Thing?: Thoughts from a Technically Southern Arts Writer
When I woke up this morning in Nashville, I checked, as I routinely do, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Times. When I went to the coffee shop next to my apartment, I encountered more people from elsewhere than from here; my best friend is in … [Read more...]
A meeting with Paul Bowles in Tangier, 1980
In June of 1980 my manuscript submission had won me a place in the School of Visual Arts pilot program of study with writer/composer Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco. At the time of my acceptance to the program I was working as a regional reporter at … [Read more...]
The Middle Word in Life: Dennis Hopper and Rudyard Kipling’s “If”
Actor, director, and artist Dennis Hopper staged performances of British poet Rudyard Kipling's "If" throughout his career. In Kipling's original poem, the voice is that of a father offering prudent advice to the son on how to be a man and remain focused … [Read more...]
The Invitation of the Mirror: Jonathan Lethem & Me, from the Margin to the Mainstream
Words and images by Jasun Horsley I recently had a podcast discussion with the author Jonathan Lethem. This connection has probably meant more to me than previous connections. For one thing, it’s been ongoing since the inception (very much was the … [Read more...]
Remembering poet David Gitin
It is with a numbed sense of great personal loss that I report the passing on June 27th of David Gitin: poet, educator, and polymath. As Gloria Avner lovingly phrased it (his long-lost teenage sweetheart, re-discovered and reunited in Key Largo six years … [Read more...]
An interview with Argentinian poet, publisher and translator, Juan Arabia
Juan Arabia (b.1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a poet, translator and literary critic. He studied Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and is now the director and publisher of the website, Buenos Aires Poetry. In the course of his work he … [Read more...]
That Deadly Lord Douglas: Oscar Wilde and De Profundis
It is hard to read the letter published as De Profundis, with its account of Wilde’s disastrous life with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, without laughing. From his cell in Reading Gaol, Wilde recounts the tally of the couple’s lavish, carefree days of … [Read more...]
Infinite Jesting: On the Unbearable Lightness of Our Time
We have, it seems, fallen into the ticklish grip of a cultural and existential order that has become virtually impossible to buck—humor. This is especially the case in literature. Rare is the work that gets published or attains any prominence if it … [Read more...]
Attempt to Hear All the Voices: On the Nature of Essay
An essay is an entity in itself that moves, explores, sometimes discovers and enlightens, explains, clarifies, and attempts to relate in some way to the world outside of it. An essay moves on its own and is sometimes moving its readers to do the same, or … [Read more...]
A Consideration of Borges’ Poetics
I read Jorge Luis Borges' This Craft of Verse in one sitting. It is a collection of six essays originally given as lectures at Harvard University in 1967-1968. The tone is easy and conversational. Borges speaks about the reader's interaction with a poem, … [Read more...]
Fully Aboard the Flesh Wagon: Tin House Writers Workshop, Summer 2014
About a week before his fortieth birthday, virgin poet Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) recorded in his journal that he had “received a woman’s favors” at last. His world was not rocked. “Frankly, compared to what the imagination assumes or … [Read more...]
The Consequences of Violence
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. —Oscar Wilde I’ve found it true in personal experience that being a target of life-threatening violence strips away everything that isn’t … [Read more...]
Raskolnikov and the Peanut: Mirror Neurons & the Arcane Art of Writing
“Don’t scorn the word: Poets, the world is noisy and silent, only God speaks.” —Antonio Machado Pornography, Shamanic Healing, & Language-Based Reality “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow In 1992, or so … [Read more...]
“Said God, Scratching His Naked Belly in a Kitchen”: Charles Bukowski to Robert Bly
Unlike any other time in U.S. history, the 1950s and ‘60s saw the emergence of multiple literary movements stoked by a flourishing small-press culture. Popular magazines of the time included the New York-based Fuck You founded by Ed Sanders and Floating … [Read more...]
Nature As Muse: The World of Fine Writing
The world is never “too much with us,” said Wordsworth, but not the wild glories, which he treasured, too. Natural gifts reflecting the gifts of the gods, or of Darwin’s insights and those of the plate tectonics wizards. Everything moves. All of this … [Read more...]
Wordsworth and the Beats: The Longevity of Influence
Although William Wordsworth once stated that he was “not a critic” and, in fact, “set little value upon the art” (Leitch 556), in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” he nevertheless proposed and discussed several controversial ideas that would become key … [Read more...]
The Necessity of Tragedy—How What Goethe Played with is Still Entirely Relevant
One may say that the benefit of tragedy is that one gets to witness man self-destruct without having to self-destruct on one’s own. Lessons learned without having to go through the actual act of the crime. Tragedies were incredibly prevalent during the … [Read more...]
Yannis Livadas: A double interview
These interviews were conducted for Quorum Magazine, which is based in Croatia. This is their first appearance in English. Interview No. 1 Tomica Bajsic interviewed the poet Yannis Livadas for Quorum Magazine, n. 3/4, 2012. Q: During years … [Read more...]
Calling on Paul Bowles: Tangier, Morocco, August 1979
Calling on Paul Bowles Tangier, Morocco, August 1979 ”There it is,” someone says, and in the darkness, in the distance, you can see Tangier sprawled across several hills, a white city illuminated by electric lights and veiled by a thin fog. … [Read more...]
Revenge of the Imagist Socialist Poetry
We are the revenge of all oppressed, despised, ignored, exploited, beaten, insulted, neglected, abused, molested humans in the world as being fighters for their rights with our poems and essays. We are the revenge of the Poetry Art and we are fighting … [Read more...]
Is Andy Kaufman Still Alive? The Evidence
My name is Jack Bristow -- AKA, the guy who was interviewed by the Huffington Post about Andy Kaufman being alive and well in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Though the interview took place 2013, May 15, I am still tweeted and e-mailed all kinds of questions to … [Read more...]
Was Roosevelt Reciting Poetry?: The Need for a New Prosody
In the last ten years, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, James Tate, Stephen Dunn, Franz Wright and Naomi Shihab Nye have published books of prose poetry. Before them, Rilke, Baudelaire, Poe, Whitman, Octavio Paz, Henri Michaux, Gertrude Stein and Sherwood … [Read more...]
Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that engage with their respective, eponymous forces and ostensibly present them as a … [Read more...]
Free Speech Cantos
Free Speech Canto XXVI Banned in Boston constitutes an epic of censorship A few excerpts from that epic: A private morality police was formed (giving away its religious base with the occasional use of the word crusade) … [Read more...]
Charles Reznikoff’s “During the Second World War…” as Objectivist Ars Poetica
This essay is dedicated to Charles Bernstein A poem I keep coming back to again and again is Charles Reznikoff’s “During the Second World War, I Was Going Home One Night,”1 first published in 1969. I first encountered the poem from hearing it in … [Read more...]
Joints
One of San Pedro’s most appealing qualities is that it’s not very popular. When I first decided to move here from Venice my neighbor, a realtor, suggested why. “It’s so working class, just a lot of longshoremen, nothing to do there, hardly any art … [Read more...]
Dylan Thomas reads “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”
Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is one of the best known Chirstmas poems. "This recording was digitized from the LP, "Dylan Thomas Reading Volume 1," issued on the Caedmon label in 1964, catalogue number TC 1002. It was recorded February … [Read more...]
David Handley’s interview with Author Alex Preston
Alex Preston was born in Worthing, West Sussex in 1979. He is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, 2010's This Bleeding City, and The Revelations which was released in 2012. As well as his work as a novelist, Preston writes and reviews for a … [Read more...]
Book Review – Erik Verhaar’s Andalusian Dogging
Andalusian Dogging by Erik Verhaar, translated by Jonathan Ellis / The Reception Game / 2013 / 17 pages In Erik Verhaar's short story, inspired by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's 1929 film An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou), the film itself becomes a … [Read more...]
Cry, Exploration, Ceremony
Oppositional postmodernist literature is associated with the Beat movement and came about after the terrible, unforeseen destruction of World War II. While the modernists were positive about the human spirit and mankind’s ability to progress to an ever … [Read more...]
Book Review – The Jack Kerouac Upper Peninsula Diary by t. kilgore splake
The Jack Kerouac Upper Peninsula Diary / t. kilgore splake / Angst Publications / PO Box 508, Calumet, MI 49913-0508 / 1998 The author provided Empty Mirror with a review copy. “Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”- Jack … [Read more...]
Love in the no-land space between two cultures: an interview with Zlatko Anguelov
Jasmina Tacheva talks with Bulgarian-American author Zlatko Anguelov about his newest book, Erotic Memories (2012), and the ideas of love, devotion, harmony and memory on the border between two cultures. Zlatko Anguelov, born 1946 in Varna, Bulgaria, … [Read more...]
Typewriter Experiment #1: Getting to Know You
A few months ago I bought an Olivetti typewriter with the goal of experimenting with the way the creative process changes when writing on a typewriter versus writing on a computer. This image is a scan of my first attempt, a stream of consciousness … [Read more...]
Book Review – Beatitude: A Novel by Larry Closs
Beatitude by Larry Closs / Rebel Satori Press / 2011 / 978-1608640294 / 272 pages Empty Mirror received a copy of Beatitude from the author, with no obligation. ] Larry Closs' debut novel focuses on Harry Charity, who is gay, and his relationship … [Read more...]
Wankers, Burds, and Skag: Heteroglossia in Trainspotting
Mikhail Bakhtin, a twentieth century Russian philosopher and semiotician, was a theorist who worked heavily in literary theory, as well as the philosophy of language. One of his major concepts regarding the philosophy of language addresses the variations … [Read more...]
An Interview with Poet Jack Leaf Willetts
Jack, your new poetry collection, The Beauty of being Hated, has just been published. What can you tell us about it? It was hard to live and hard to write. It was written out of a series of negative situations and I was bent on documenting them. I was … [Read more...]
The Beauty in Hatred: Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetic Theory in De Profundis
Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. Psalm 130 Composed in January through March of 1897 in Reading Prison, Berkshire, De Profundis is a letter of “revelation of all that is … [Read more...]
Uncle Fred: Remembering F.N. Wright
[Editor's note: F.N. Wright was a novelist, artist, and poet, whose work was published widely in the small press.] Uncle Fred and I once thought up a name for our dream bookstore. It would be called Tangents. I’ve always thought that would be a … [Read more...]