It Might Be Lonelier Without the Loneliness: Poetry and Loneliness
Poems, for me, are the epitome of Dickinson’s capital-L Loneliness, that loneliness that accompanies and keeps one from feeling utterly alone, its shadow-shape, its cameo presence.
Demented and Seductive
In the 12-episode series of her podcast You Must Remember This titled “Charles Manson’s Hollywood,” Karina Longworth takes listeners from Manson’s early delinquency, through his aspirational move to L.A. and subsequent occupation of abandoned movie set Spahn Ranch, to the details and aftermath of the murders for which he’s
The Bricklayer, the Atheist, and David Foster Wallace
There is this wonderful pseudo-parable in Infinite Jest, about 150 pages in, that a State Farm claims agent, murrayf, shares through internal Interlace-System email with his friends at work.
Against Epigraphs
A poem’s epigraph does more than set the tone—it raises the stakes before the poem even begins. Almost every poem could have an epigraph, if inspiration and interest were the criteria. But I’d like to propose the opposite. Let’s put a moratorium on epigraphs.
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Restoration” by Ann Joslin Williams
In “Restoration” (Carve), Ann Joslin Williams shows how a widower’s memories and the discovery of a dead body conflate in the present moment, to dramatic effect.
Where’s the Diversity in the Campus Novel?
September’s as good a month as any to return to the campus novel. Since its inception around the 1950s—at least insofar as its American iterations are concerned—there’s been something inextricably optimistic about it. It implies transformation, a metamorphosis, and there’s energy in that.
Why the Girl Rules the World
It’s hard not to notice the word girl writ large on book covers and film posters everywhere. It’s also tough to ignore the flurry of opinions on whether titular appropriation of the word is sexist and offensive or just smart marketing. Turns out the word is surprisingly flexible.
Review: WILLY LOMAN’S RECKLESS DAUGHTER OR LIVING TRUTHFULLY UNDER IMAGINARY CIRCUMSTANCES by Elizabeth Powell
In this fantastic collection what is evident from the get-go is that the speaker is most definitely a daughter. She is also a wife, a mother, a woman of the deep heart and spirit. Reckless? No. Or, yes, if the heart is a reckless landscape of emotive temperaments, shifts,
“frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own”: A Conversation with Jonathan Jacob Moore
A discussion with Jonathan Jacob Moore regarding Frank Ocean, blackness, queerness, presence/absence, music, and Moore's recent poem "frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own."
The Poetics of Madness: Reading and Writing Mental Illness
In a sense, madness (to use an archaic but attractive term) is a problem of narrative. To put it plainly: mental illness makes it difficult to know just what the heck is going on, or to what extent one’s perceptions of events can be trusted.