January 28, 2014
Ozymandias in Outer Space
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 poem, “Ozymandias,” has had a pretty good run so far. Beyond the fact that it remains a staple of introductory college courses in literature, it has […]
January 22, 2014
Amiri Baraka’s Dope
Though I knew a few things about spoken word by the end of my first year of college, nothing had prepared me to hear a recording of Amiri Baraka’s “Dope.” […]
December 31, 2013
Time-Traveling with Jack Johnson
I’m looking forward to a bit of time travel–I just ordered The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka, a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry this year. Matejka manages to […]
December 30, 2013
The Year of the Flood
One year, a few days before Christmas, the city’s pipes backed up and pushed several thousand gallons of water up through our drains and flooded our basement. A litany of […]
December 16, 2013
The Fort Greene Renaissances
“I think that maybe we can’t see it now, but more time passes…they’re gonna say, “This could be Brooklyn’s equivalent to the Harlem Renaissance.” –Spike Lee In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, […]
December 6, 2013
Policing the Magical Real: Unarmed Man Shoots Two Women
Imagine this story. An unarmed man behaves erratically in the middle of the street, cars weaving around him and swerving to avoid each other. The flashing screens of 50 feet […]
December 2, 2013
Why Teach Literature Now?
Last week, I attended a session called “Another University is Possible–Right?” at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in Washington, D.C. Since then, I’ve been ruminating on how […]
November 28, 2013
Happy Birthday to “Midnight”
A few weeks ago, an important literary event went unnoticed in the literary world: Midnight Marauders turned twenty. Midnight, the third album of legendary hip hop group A Tribe Called […]
November 18, 2013
Spam Poetry
Creative writing training rebuilt my eyes. One workshop leader told me to watch what the person in line ahead of you buys at the grocery store, and take note of […]
October 31, 2013
Why Do I Think Owning a Bookstore Would Be a Good Idea?
Nobel Laureate Alice Munro founded a bookstore in Victoria that is still open today. I’ve never visited it, but I hear it’s beautiful. For some reason, I keep returning in […]
October 24, 2013
Tesseract Days
One of the many benefits of having a child is that I’m able to read and watch good stories on a regular basis. These stories are often short, and involve […]
October 17, 2013
The Thin Red Underline
In his essential, slim volume Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes elaborated his theory of the punctum–that element of a photograph that “pierces” you, haunts you, pulls you into […]