torn from a frantic nap into my perch in the corner. drowsy stare makes a masterpiece. the shadow paint. candied branch drip. white shoes on wet grass that glow like a fizz. //// /// /// / /// / … [Read more...]
Intimacy with Doors
Doors are a foundation of our psyche. To understand this, we must ask ourselves: how do we move through doors, how do we conduct ourselves near doors, as we flit through our busy lives, bags in hand, … [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, … [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 … [Read more...]
Yankees in Fairyland: A Review of Take Me Out, by Richard Greenberg
Richard Greenberg’s play Take Me Out is as much about the role of the athlete, particularly the baseball “star,” as it is about what makes a team function—and what threatens the unity of a team. The … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [Read more...]
