Author Archive

S-TOWN and the “Daunting Exercise” of True Crime

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Less than forty-eight hours after Serial and This American Life released their new true crime podcast, I got a text message from a friend about it. “S-Town podcast. Listen immediately. All seven episodes.”

You vs Me, An Intellectual: Rewriting Pop Culture in Poetry

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Pop culture, like poetry, can work like excavation; it authorizes us to ask questions, to uncover, and to translate.

This is Normal: Reading Evil in the Everyday

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On Twitter, people keep saying this “isn’t normal.” In this story, the villain is an exception to the rule of normalcy. Maybe, I thought, that story is easier to tell than the real one.

Thirst Trap: Desperation in Kaveh Akbar’s PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC

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I carried Kaveh Akbar’s Portrait of the Alcoholic around for weeks before reading it. I do this from time to time when I know a text is going to challenge me beyond the ways in which poetry is always challenging; I like to prepare for a confrontation.