February 23, 2014
Birds and Brush Strokes
As readers, we have certain lines (or stanzas, or paragraphs) that we can’t get out of our heads. Maybe it’s just a phrase: Dickinson’s “Buccaneers of Buzz,” Larkin’s “not untrue […]
February 17, 2014
Making Your Own Days, So to Speak
Another storm system is hurtling toward Michigan this evening. A half-foot of snow is expected, along with more gum-eraser skies. Haven’t we had enough of this already? Would somebody please […]
February 3, 2014
Hop To It
In Edgar Allan Poe’s glorious short story “Hop-Frog,” the title character, a court jester, plays a practical joke on the king he serves—a king who “seemed to live only for […]
January 27, 2014
Kafka for Kids
On today’s date, in 1904, Franz Kafka penned a letter to Oskar Pollak. “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us,” the […]
January 26, 2014
Mittmentum, the Return
I have a wealth of Mitt Romney poetry that I fear isn’t aging well. Romney was my muse for much of 2011 and 2012; I wrote about forty squibs in […]
January 7, 2014
The Cold Is Cold
On today’s date, in 1972, we said goodbye to John Berryman. Or rather, he said goodbye to us, offering a brief wave before jumping off the side of Minneapolis’s Washington […]
January 1, 2014
Out with the Auld
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Of course not, says experience, and conscience, and (answering his own question) Robert Burns. So we raise our cups o’ […]
December 29, 2013
Sixteen Days with Zia & Sip-Sip by Dad
Back in 2009, before I had kids, I spent some time with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa. I read the book; I listened (twice) […]
December 25, 2013
Christmas, Festively
I’ve been thinking about a George Saunders story called “Christmas.” The narrator of the story is part of a roofing crew, a crew that includes a forty-two-year-old, down-on-his-luck, “gentle-voiced” man […]
December 16, 2013
Smacko, Redux
In Traveling Sprinkler, Nicholson Baker’s sort-of sequel to The Anthologist, poet Paul Chowder turns his attention to drone attacks, and songwriting, and ex-girlfriend wooing. He’s nearly “Fifty Fucking Five,” the […]
November 30, 2013
The Twain (and Wilde) Shall Meet
Did Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde ever share a bottle or a joke? That’s a question I’ve been trying to answer for the last hour. Wilde’s literary ascent in the […]
November 28, 2013
More Life
One of my daughters turns ten today. I’m not sure how much we’ll celebrate, seeing that it’s also Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah. Still, ten feels important—it’s the […]