November 7, 2018
“Spare this body, set fire to another”: Speech & Silence in Work by Kaveh Akbar, Brenna Womer, & Henk Rossouw
In the one volume of writing that he published during his lifetime, Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Indeed, grammar, and […]
November 6, 2018
On Titles
It’s always amusing to read about the original titles of famous novels. A few years ago an infographic from Jonkers Rare Books made the rounds on the Internet and revealed […]
November 6, 2018
An Interview With Maryse Meijer
Carmen Maria Machado wrote of Maryse Meijer’s Northwood, which comes out this week, “This strange and beautiful novella has everything I want: formal play, myths and fairy tales, the politics […]
November 6, 2018
In the U.S. Today
Our political discourse proceeds in a mode of polarized vituperation, populist nationalism infects the air we breathe, racist language that many thought had gone the way of segregated bathrooms continues […]
November 5, 2018
Why We Chose It
“Not Here to Make Friends,” by Clarence Harlan Orsi, appears in the Nov/Dec 2018 issue of KROnline. Joseph, the protagonist of Clarence Harlan Orsi’s story “Not Here to Make Friends,” […]
November 2, 2018
The Poetics of Disbelief
In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously coined the term “suspension of disbelief,” meaning a willingness to silence one’s critical faculties and believe in something purely conjectural for the sake of […]
October 30, 2018
Drafts, Part II: Rewrites, Deleted Scenes & Orphans
In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about my long road of novel revision and some of the reactions I received regarding just how extensive the process has been. […]
October 30, 2018
As Midterm Elections Approach, Poets Respond
For almost a year now, I’ve been teaching at The Speakeasy Project, where I serve as a Poetry Mentor. I have never in my life enjoyed this kind of workshop experience as […]
October 29, 2018
An Interview With Idra Novey
Idra Novey started her writing career as a poet, and she brings this lyrical sensibility to her two novels, the 2016 Ways to Disappear and her new book, out next […]
October 27, 2018
What I Mean When I Say Hakol Beseder
This Shabbat morning, I began composing an email to a physicist friend that began with: “We are all electrons and quarks, after all, at least according to your field, unless […]
October 27, 2018
Drafts, Part I: Revision Resistance
On October 20 I attended Cleveland Drafts, a daylong literary festival that snaked its way through a bookstore, a gallery, and three bars in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood. The event was […]
October 26, 2018
Improvisation: New Orleans’s Gift to the Modern World
Since the cave-dwellers of Lascaux shaped their drawings to conform to the bulges and crannies of their cave walls, improvisation has always been with us. But if there is a […]