March 7, 2008
See you at the Spouter-Inn
Call me Tyler. Seems researchers off the coast of Alaska found an actual, honest-to-goodness white whale recently. If the National Geographic research boat was rammed, once or numerous times, it […]
March 6, 2008
On What The Horse Left In Brighton
With literary hoaxes back in the news, I hope poetry’s last hoax, Araki Yasusada, the Hiroshima survivor who never lived, gets renewed attention. While the hoax and its many feathers […]
March 5, 2008
Take Two
1.) Walking on Bookshelves (via) 2.) A Check-Up for the Short Story In case you missed it–Stephen King’s intro to the Best American Stories 2007 questions the health of the […]
March 4, 2008
The Terror of the Real
Like Sarah, I’ve been following the recent spate of fake memoirs with some fascination. The growing genre of fake Holocaust memoirs seems to me particularly interesting, mainly because it’s so […]
March 4, 2008
Remembering William F. Buckley, Jr.
I am tempted to begin my commemoration of William Buckley, who died last week, with the expected qualification that I disagree with many of his views. As a matter of […]
March 4, 2008
Reginald Shepherd and the Post-Avant
About a month ago, Reginald Shepherd posted some thoughts over at the Poetry Foundation’s blog “Harriet” about what exactly the term “post-avant” means and if such a thing actually exists […]
March 4, 2008
A Banner Week for Faking It
For someone who studies autobiography and life-writing for a living, it’s been an interesting week. Last Friday came the announcement that Misha Defonesca has admitted to having fictionalized her heretofore-claimed-to-be-true […]
March 3, 2008
Documentary Poetry?
In exchange for my share of the filthy lucre, I have worked from time to time as a technical writer, documenting processes, primarily. It sounds boring to most people; they […]
March 2, 2008
Rereading ‘The Poet in the World’
Having read Dan Barden’s essay Workshop in P&W’s recent issue, like Heather Christie, I had a strong reaction to some of his feelings about teaching the workshop. Then I went […]
March 1, 2008
JK Rowling, Inc.
I’m about to become very unpopular. Emotionally, I keep two lists. One is labeled, for sake of this discussion, “Creator.” The other is labeled “Company”. The “Creator” list is filled […]
February 29, 2008
Change We Can Believe In (For Workshops)
Dan Barden has an article up over at the Poets & Writers site, titled Workshop: A Rant Against Creative Writing Classes. I’m not the biggest fan of the traditional workshop […]
February 28, 2008
On Writing Badly
First, a confession: I’m a bad writer. I try to tell myself it doesn’t show, or at least not much, but it’s a conclusion that I’m often forced to draw […]