September 3, 2010
Here Comes the Story of the Hurricane
Yesterday, crossing campus at lunchtime, I found myself caught in a storm. A few minutes later, drying off at a corner table with a toasted “everything” bagel (“everything,” by the […]
August 25, 2010
A Late-August Lob
The US Open begins next week. No, not the golf version, with its multiple pathologies — but tennis, the sport I once loved so much that I would wake up […]
August 15, 2010
The Short of It
About five months ago I wrote a brief, of sorts, on speed. (Let me rephrase: I wrote about the virtues of speed, in short fiction and film.) I promised, at […]
August 3, 2010
The Sewanee Writers’ Conference: Dig Yourself
The 2010 Sewanee Writers’ Conference ended just over a week ago; I’m back in Ann Arbor, having Honda’d my way through Kentucky and Ohio. Still, I have all of these […]
July 20, 2010
The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, at the Midpoint
A few days ago, in his Sewanee Writers’ Conference craft talk, Richard Bausch said, “A writer is a bookish person.” (He also praised the value of exposition — reversing the […]
July 10, 2010
July 10: Clerihew Day
It’s possible — OK, likely — that my life as an even semi-serious poet was ruined by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. Because once I started writing clerihews, once I started concocting […]
July 4, 2010
Ain’t That America
Today marks the 155th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass. The 36-year-old Whitman had hoped to write a “new American Bible,” a work that you, the reader, might […]
June 26, 2010
Weekly World News
MAYOR, JOKE-SAYER Jon Gnarr: Har har har har har! (That’s the punch line. The set-up: The fed-up voters of Reykjavik could only stomach a comic.)
June 24, 2010
Detroit Walkabout
“To escape,” writes Virginia Woolf, in her essay “Street Haunting,” “is the greatest of pleasures.” She’s describing a walk she took on a London winter afternoon, an afternoon in which […]
June 10, 2010
The Sixth Memo
I’ve glanced in the direction of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium from time to time during my year-plus of writing these posts, but I’ve never, until now, […]
May 31, 2010
We Hardly Know Who He Is or What He Means
He was born on this date, in 1819, on Long Island. He believed in the soul; he believed in the procreant urge of the world. Still, if anyone supposed it […]
May 24, 2010
Salute Him When His Birthday Comes
It’s May 24th, Bob Dylan’s 69th birthday, and I’ve had this collection of Dylan books stacked next to my desk since mid-March. After visiting Minneapolis a couple of months ago, […]