Poet Activist Spotlight: Franny Choi
“Poetry is a space in which logic plays a secondary role to imagination and feeling, and that can be a really great playground for a young person who is trying to define themselves and understand the world (i.e., all young people).”
—Franny Choi
Stories are Never Neutral: Disability, Representation, and Autonomous Press
From childhood, we’re taught to see ourselves as others see us. We learn to synthesize “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” into a whole through a complex process of self-identification. We see who and what we’re taught to see, a looping phenomena that means we’re literally made up of story.
Trudy Dittmar Explores the Uncanny Valley
Nature writing may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but add some cinema and cultural intrigue and you’ve got some evocative reading. Such is the case with Trudy Dittmar’s Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky: Brushes with Nature’s Wisdom, a collection of essays from University of Iowa Press.
Serial, Timelines, and Fiction
In "Route Talk," an episode from the first season of Serial, Sarah Koenig and her producer attempt to recreate the state’s timeline of the murder of Hae Min Lee. As I listened, I was struck by how similar their exercise was to one creative writers perform.
René Daumal and the Science of Imaginary Solutions
At the age of 16, soon-to-be writer, editor, and translator René Daumal decided to inhale carbon tetrachloride. Deliberately inhaling carbon tetrachloride is generally a bad idea, but Daumal did it anyway because he wanted to “see,” to hover between life and death in order to understand both more fully.
Daniel Saldaña París’ Among Strange Victims Is the Book You Need in the Post-Trump-Visit-to-Mexico Era
Of all Mexican novels to read in this post-Trump-visit-to-Mexico era, Daniel Saldaña París’ Among Strange Victims reigns supreme. Not that it’s an overtly political novel, but it is one that explores the unbearable absurdities of living in this world.
Cowboy Bebop: Ralph Ellison’s Strange Jazz Geography
Reading The Blue Devils of Nada, Albert Murray’s 1996 collection of essays on jazz, the blues, and American expression, I penciled four question marks next one line.
On Scent and Time Travel
Somewhere in West Virginia sits a ghost town that once was a heap of millionaires. Thirteen unlucky mansions haunt Bramwell: the place where, about a century ago, the women bought boatloads of Chanel No. 5.
Aliens in Science Fiction: What’s “Out There” Has Always Reflected What’s “In Here”
While science fiction has long been obsessed with robots, the genre has an even longer relationship with aliens, who are often far scarier: where they came from, how they think, and what they want are questions to which there is no comforting answer, if there’s an answer at all.
So Much Depends Upon: America’s Most Misread Poems
Over the years, I’ve distilled people’s reactions down to a core set of misconceptions about poetry. Some of the most pervasive: Poetry is overly difficult. It’s obtuse on purpose. It’s like a riddle. You need to read between the lines. It can mean anything you want it to.