The Alchemy of Poetry Plus Criticism
What is the goal of poetry? Is it to make music with language? To express feeling? To make an argument? It’s likely, for any given poet, to be at least one of these things—and possibly all.
The Lost Generation’s Women: Writers, Muses, and Supporters
The generation straddled wars, genres, and identities, leaving behind the staid writing of Edwardians, or what Hemingway referred to as “broad lawns and narrow minds.” Gertrude Stein was their godmother, acting as both an artist and a supporter of the arts.
Round-Up: Denis Johnson, Short Edition, and Khizr Khan
From the death of author Denis Johnson to a short story-dispensing machine in Boston, here’s the latest literary news.
Washington, Real and Imagined
So much of the political news from the nation’s capital seems, these days, stranger than fiction.
Stories Strangely Told: Stuart Dybek’s “Misterioso”
An art that constantly changes contour is an art that keeps us free, keeps us questioning and alive.
Matriarchy and the Tired Assassin
Much like its predecessor, Dishonored 2 is a steampunk revenge story painted in vintage graphic design tones combining genre conventions of sci-fi, supernatural fantasy, historical fiction, and action RPG into a stunning nine-chapter video game novella that is as gory and interactive as it is inventive and derivative.
The Narrative Conscience: An Interview With Connie May Fowler
Connie May Fowler’s new memoir, A Million Fragile Bones, is the story of finding home on a Florida sandbar, a migratory crossroads for monarchs, hummingbirds, purple martins, where “dragonflies stir the air with the metallic thrum of transparent wings.”
Thinking and Seeing in Pictures: The Art of Visualization
Most writers I know have amazing verbal skills. They became writers because they fell in love with reading books. But as Joseph Conrad suggests, writers are equal parts visual artists. We paint pictures with words.
Review: THE GYPSY MOTH SUMMER by Julia Fierro
There are many hard edges here—a pervading sense of doom hovers throughout—but my favorite moments are when we get to see the softer, more interior side of these characters.
Throwback Thursday: Animal Farm by George Orwell
The moral of the story is perhaps a bit dark, and the suggestion that there is no way to revolt and gain substantive change is perhaps one that has evolved in the nearly three-quarters of a century since the time that the novella was published.