William H. Gass wrote books that were saturated with signs. Even the one-word sentences, and he wrote a lot of them, seem charged with stylistic and rhetorical shaping. It was arguably overloaded and overlabored. But man, what a powerful voice. Talk about the anxiety of influence: Gass was to me as Faulkner was to Gass. Only now that he is gone, to become a ghost who can truly … [Read more...]
Five Past Noon: Reading Darkness at Noon in Trump’s America
“What a mess we have made of our golden age.” -- Nicholas Rubashov This August, a now-famous photograph began circulating online. In the original, Donald Trump is seated in the oval office with a phone wedged against his ear. With him in the room are five men, his closest allies and advisors: Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Chief Strategist Steve … [Read more...]
Chaucer and the Art of the Grift
"Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat," David Maurer wrote in his linguistic study The Big Con. He dove into the world of the criminal elite, those who did not get rich by threats or violence, but by their wits alone. "It is a point of pride with him that he does not need to steal"; instead "the trusting victim literally thrusts a fat bank roll into his … [Read more...]
Realism: Just How Real Is It?
We’ve been sold a bill of goods. The original crime was committed a century and a half ago when literary romanticism was kicked to the curb by Flaubert, Tolstoy, Twain, and other disciples of a new religion: realism. I’m not claiming that I prefer romanticism to realism. I do not. But if I’m going to invest my literary capital, I want to know what I’m buying, and I think I’m a … [Read more...]
“No, this was all first person”: Revisiting Jorie Graham’s Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts
Jorie Graham’s first poetry collection, Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts (1980) has a way of receding from memory despite its potency due, in part, to the great success of her second collection. Her career as we know it today began to take shape after Erosion (1983) was reviewed by Helen Vendler in the New York Times. Vendler wrote that the volume contained “a poetry of delicate … [Read more...]
I Am Nothing: Thoughts on Thoreau
I find much of Thoreau's writings a statement of decay: physical and spiritual. Even with a dead horse, Thoreau finds solace though he must cover his nose with a handkerchief. Let the vultures dig in and have their feast, we should be cheered at such avarice sport."Life—all life—is good, vultures as well as bluebirds, worms as well as butterflies, funky, phallus-shaped … [Read more...]
The Yoke of Duty: Of Caregiving and Middlemarch
As strong a force as love is, it only got me through the first time I thought my husband was dying. It turned out the motivation that really stuck, what kept me going through the rigors of caregiving, was duty. I would have like to think it would have been love, but no: Outmoded, grim, sexist duty kept me trudging back and forth to the hospital, doing laundry, taking care of … [Read more...]
Lucien Stryk: Zen in the art of translating Zen poetry
Once someone can leave aside the narrowminded attitude, a parallelism with the cultural outcome of the long-gone “counterculture”, and a few more notions considering guidelines for every-day afterglow, one can proceed step by step to the authentic study of the oriental classics, Zen or Buddhist literature, etc. To find what? Pure nothing. Only what is not there, and that … [Read more...]
Between Something and Nothing: Franz Marc’s Authorial Ether
A painter and writer who was born and lived most of his life in Bavaria, Franz Marc was one of the key protagonists in the great European debate on the nature and the goals of art at the beginning of the 20th century. Marc’s and Wassily Kandinsky’s 1911 hybrid art-book the Blaue Reiter Almanac was immediately hailed as a turning point in the practice of artists providing … [Read more...]
The Sons of Anak: Henry David Thoreau and John Brown
The Sons of Anak Concord, Massachusetts – Fall 1859 “It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.” — Journal, October 4, 1859 On September 5, 1859, Concord was seasonably cool after strong winds (those that pelted the fifty-six-year-old Emerson’s yard with unripe pears),[1] prevailed two days previous. Green urgent sprouts of corn emerged from … [Read more...]
Anything Can Happen: Bruno Sourdin in conversation with Gary Cummiskey
Bruno Sourdin is a French poet and collagist. He was born in 1950 in the Mont-Saint-Michel area. After studying journalism in Paris, he travelled in Morocco, Egypt, and India. He now lives in Normandy. His first collection of poems, Les Haillons d’Ecume, was published in 1977. His more recent titles include Hazel (2005), L’air de la route (2013), Vers les fjords de l’ouest … [Read more...]
Aldous Huxley’s Dianetic Utopia
In 1950, shortly after launching the dianetic movement that would eventually become known as Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard paid a visit to the house of noted English author, Aldous Huxley, who at that time was living in Los Angeles. To many, it would appear that Huxley was being rather generous with his time by meeting with such an obvious crackpot and conman. However, Huxley was … [Read more...]
Negative Capability: Keats and Buddha
The relationship of Buddhism and the poetic process is a sublime yet unexplored topic among Western scholars. It’s about the silent space between the words, not just the word itself. The poet John Keats writes: At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative … [Read more...]
Secret of the Masters: An Interview with Poet Edward Field
This interview was conducted in September 2016 and first published, along with the poem "Secret of the Masters," the next month in the now-defunct Eris Magazine. The poem "Doggy Love" is published here for the first time. The last two poems are excerpted with the poet's permission from After The Fall: Poems Old and New (2007). Edward Field is one of America's greatest poets. … [Read more...]
“My Friend the Censor”: Henry Miller, Huntington Cairns, and Tropic of Cancer
In September 1934 the American writer Henry Miller, age 42, had published in Paris his autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer. In that same month, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington, D.C., the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a young Baltimore lawyer as the official U.S. Censor. One of the new censor’s first acts was to place Tropic of Cancer on the list … [Read more...]
Henry and Me
I first heard of Henry Miller, perhaps fittingly, when I lived with two other guys in East Vancouver. One of the guys had a friend who was a postman, the other guy was having an affair with the postman’s wife. There were a few awkward moments when he snuck her in for a night or an afternoon quickie, but, all in all, things went well and I saw a book which the postman had lent … [Read more...]
Taking the Poet at his Word: Editing the Poems of T. S. Eliot
When T. S. Eliot summed up his life’s work in 1963, two years before he died, it was in a Collected Poems of fewer than 250 pages. But when Christopher Ricks and I published The Poems of T. S. Eliot last year, the two volumes ran to some two thousand pages. Where did the other 1,750 pages come from? What is this new edition, and what does it mean to “edit” poetry anyway? … [Read more...]
“I am a deserter” — Marcel Duchamp
“I am a deserter” - Marcel Duchamp I looked out the window. The leaves were turning yellow… turning towards death … or turning towards resurrection … No. Death … Duchamp said when we die consciousness leaves us and we vanish ... "I came to take your blood." I looked up. someone was standing at my side. "Oh, no," I said. "My veins are scarred. Please don't … [Read more...]
Endgame (May you live in interesting times – Chinese Curse)
I walked out of the bookstore, grateful for fresh air. I looked up a poster announcing an upcoming reading by Karl Ove Knausgård. I turned my head and looked at The Gluten-Free Bakery next door. “I stay in the shade. It’s marvelous. Everyone else, however, heads for the sun to get tan; I hate it.” I turned to the voice coming towards me. I am absolutely certain it was … [Read more...]
Concealing The Light From The Lit
" … the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of artists." A man at The Remainders Table was pointing at my sketchbook. " … huh?…" "… I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists." I looked up; this man looked exactly like Marcel Duchamp. "… what d-d-do you mean?" … [Read more...]
Joys and Ticks: A Thank You to Joyce Carol Oates
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 on why we saw our chosen individuals as role models. While peeling apples in front of bowls of lemon juice, we brainstormed … [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 advocated for the artistic theory of Duende, a term which originally referred to a mischievous hobgoblin in Spanish folklore, … [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 graduate school in Minneapolis; my father is visiting his family in Chicago; my boyfriend is currently pacing around the living room … [Read more...]
My 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 the Record, a newspaper in Northern Jersey. I hated it. I wanted to create stories not record them. Paul Bowles was a hero to … [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 in the grip of conflict. The conflict discussed in Kipling's poem is an external as well as an internal one. Kipling's real … [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 inception) of Seen & Not Seen, and anyone who has read that work knows how important my connecting to Lethem has been to me … [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 ago), “he has finally graduated from Earth school.” It is never easy to get to know the complex and extremely gifted. … [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 has interviewed many poets including John Ashbery, Dan Fante and Robert Darnton; translated several works into Spanish and … [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 freedom. Everything was so expensive: the meals, the gifts, the gambling debts incurred by Bosie and covered by Wilde, (there … [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 lacks humor. A review that appeared a while ago in The New York Times, panning a book by David Shields, was clearly symptomatic. … [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 at least to think about its movement in a critical way. In her essay “Montaigne,” Virginia Woolf writes, “Movement and change … [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, metaphor, the epic, translation and translatability, the relation between language and thought, and his own “poetic creed” as … [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 expects, they are a small matter,” Amiel sniffed. But the deeply religious Amiel did not give up on lust – or on … [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 a core value or an innermost desire. Near the eastern Afghan village of Shkin in 2004, I huddled in a mud brick house with … [Read more...]
Raskolnikov and the Peanut: Mirror Neurons & the Arcane Art of Writing – Jasun Horsley
“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 the story goes, Giacomo Rizzolatti and a team of neuroscientists accidentally discovered mirror neurons while experimenting on … [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 Bear founded by Diane di Prima and Leroi Jones. This “Mimeo Revolution” (though not every publication used a mimeograph) … [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 and running water and birds on the wing and paths beckoning us to follow are the inspirations for great writers who, over all … [Read more...]
Joerg Haeske’s Ten Favorite Books
Joerg Haeske, author of Anywhere Road: Retracing Jack Kerouac, shares his top ten list, in no particular order: Jack Kerouac: The Dharma Bums (a tough one to choose between that and On The Road, but it shows him at his best and what is probably the best time of his life - I often wonder what could have happened to him had he stayed closer to Gary Snyder and his more moderate … [Read more...]
Linda Lenhoff’s Top Ten Books
Linda Lenhoff (@LindaLatte) is a reader and novelist. She tells us she can't bring herself to order the books, so here they are in an unordered list, with her thoughts on some of them. Independence Day by Richard Ford and Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin. These two might fight for first place, but I can’t imagine them not getting along perfectly well. The Giant's … [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 components to his literary philosophy, securing the “Preface” as a significant and influential addition to the cannon of … [Read more...]
