Since 1980 Randy Fertel has taught the literature of the Vietnam War at Harvard, Tulane, and the New School for Social Research. Kenyon Review published his “Carpe Vitam: How to Do Things with Spontaneity” in the March/April based on his new book A Taste for Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation (Spring Journal Books, March 2015).
Nonfiction
Fall 2011
Eshu on the Bayou*
If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi’s shoulder. —Milan Kundera Five years before my mother, Ruth […]
Nonfiction
Mar/Apr 2015
Carpe Vitam: How to Do Things with Spontaneity
By the brokenness of his composition the poet makes himself master of a certain weapon which he could possess himself of in no other way. William Carlos Williams, “Prologue” to […]
Nonfiction
Summer 2006
Katrina Five Ways
1. History Didn’t [s]he ramble… [s]he rambled Rambled all around… in and out of townDidn’t [s]he ramble… didn’t [she ramble [S]he rambled till the butcher cut [her] down —New Orleans […]
Winter 2016
On Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam
The literature of the Vietnam War, like most war lit, is haunted by the effort to find or create a listenership. Listen to what happened to me, each novel or poem or memoir seems to say.
Randy Fertel
Randy Fertel, PhD, has taught at Harvard, Tulane, the University of New Orleans, and the New School for Social Research. A contributor to NPR, Huffington Post, the Smithsonian, and Creative […]