What we are attracted to can sometimes intimidate or unsettle us. In the case of art and writing, the work we find powerful demands our attention, sometimes even a second encounter. Poets may shock us … [Read more...]
Pablo Neruda and the Virtues of Laziness
As history progresses, writings from the past can often take on fresh and unexpected potency; for instance, returning to the ecologically-focused poetry of Pablo Neruda, I found new significance in … [Read more...]
D.H. Lawrence’s Pansies, Nettles, and More Pansies: A Jeremiad
D.H. Lawrence is certainly most well known for his novels such as The Rainbow, Sons & Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Works such as these were important in helping to further … [Read more...]
Susan Howe’s Federalist 10: a literary approach to colonial America
Susan Howe was born on June 10th, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, to the American law professor Mark De Wolfe Howe and the Irish playwright and director Mary Manning. From the very beginning of her … [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 … [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. … [Read more...]
Uncle Fred: remembering artist and poet 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 … [Read more...]
