February 15, 2009
A Forum of Chance
We can’t walk on our heels back out the front door of pleasure’s experience. I’m denied the mercy of undoing in myself anything that’s pleased me. But one granted mercy: […]
February 13, 2009
Gertrude Stein Valentine / Anti-Valentines / Lupercalia
Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite/least favorite holidays of the year. I simultaneously love it and dread it. Like this: Or sometimes like this: But no matter which end […]
February 13, 2009
The Sky Can Never Be Merely a Background
–says Alfred Sisley. “The point of vision and desire are the same.” Don’t you always gaze not at the surrounding page but at the words? You desire to know how […]
February 11, 2009
How Much Do a Few Words Cost?
There’s been a hubbub, as we reporters call it. We also refer to such events as donnybrooks, brouhahas, kerfuffles, and to-do’s. See here for an archetypal example of such. But […]
February 11, 2009
Cynosure: Poetry and World
9. 13 Assertions i. It has been a long time since our culture has deemed poetry necessary. We may be entering such a time again. ii. We have at our […]
February 11, 2009
2009 Short Fiction Contest
Ladies and Gents! We’re nearing the halfway point of the submissions period for the 2009 Short Fiction Contest for writers under 30. The deadline for submissions is February 28th, 2009. […]
February 8, 2009
Short takes: Humble Buttons
Sometimes it’s not what we write, it’s how we write it, what we write upon, and how it’s edited. The same thing happened to “Casablanca,” in which Bogie never says, […]
February 7, 2009
A Feeling of And, a Feeling of If
I’m reading Dan Beachy-Quick’s Mulberry and listening to Sergei Prokofiev’s first violin concerto in a carriage house on Vashon Island. The violin string begins a sentence in Mulberry, halfway through […]
February 6, 2009
(Few, Quick) Notes on Slowness
In his poem Novas, Ryan Flaherty writes, “all sentences / are cranks of the engine“” His poem is a dying star, “the dull one,” talking as it slowly fades in the space between the body and the mind.
February 3, 2009
Love & Algebra
Regarding the romantic puzzle of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere (that age-old, often misty tale of love and triangles) — Kascha Semonovitch lends fresh thought and scientific method in her […]
February 3, 2009
Everything New Is Old Again. …Wait, What?
I meant to pass this along a couple of weeks ago when the original news broke. You have probably seen it by now: literally, a printed newspaper of the previous […]
February 1, 2009
Short Takes
Katha Pollitt wants print media to do better (on this subject, we can agree). Philadelphia libraries still aren’t closing yet. Need a job? Rewrite your resume in 140 characters. Obama […]