Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Poetry
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Tom Waits’ Influence On Modern Jazz

Robert Wright

Carlton Smith CD

When I first wrote about the influence that Tom Waits had on me as a songwriter (Introduction to Alchemy), I had one thing on my mind: publicity. When the idea for the second article (Applied Alchemy) … [Read more...]

A Study of Tom Waits through Cover Songs

Robert Wright

Tom Waits in Paris / photo credit: ntoper / flicker

When I wrote "Inherited Alchemy" my intentions were dualistic: to pinpoint the qualities Tom Waits held as a songwriter that were worthy of imitation, and flat-out, shameless hero-worship. Judging by … [Read more...]

Tom Waits’s Inspiration on Songwriting

Robert Wright

Tom Waits LP https://www.flickr.com/photos/zagrobot/3311079968/

As a songwriter, everything I hear is an influence, whether good or bad, loved or hated; it is "influential." In order to understand what has truly inspired a song, one should first look for the … [Read more...]

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!


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.

Subscribe Submissions Support

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.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2025 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures