January 1, 2011
The Making of John Huston’s “Freud: The Secret Passion”
I John Huston’s terrible problems with the recalcitrant Jean-Paul Sartre and the broken-down Montgomery Clift when making Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) were worse than filming under fire in The […]
January 1, 2011
The Lightning Bug and the Lightning
Excerpt from Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing* Jasmine, Inur, and Kristie took my Modern Poetry class last semester. Nina took that class with […]
October 1, 2010
The House and Garden: The Emergence of a Dream
Editor’s note: This essay is a portion of a summary written for the formation of a Conservancy on the north coast of the island of Maui in 2010. It is […]
October 1, 2010
Drinking at the Fountain of Youth
They’re flushing my system with distilled water before introducing chemicals into my IV. Actually it’s a saline solution, but I like the idea of pure water running through my veins. […]
October 1, 2010
Alberta
I. It was a cloudy day in June, our first day back on the job in Troy, Montana, when we got the call from northern Alberta. We were crowded round […]
October 1, 2010
On Not Being E. B. White
1 When I was in college, I roomed with the family of a friend one summer. My friend’s dad was an old Scot who had fought in WWI and married […]
July 1, 2010
Artichoke Hearts
We would all be better people if we paid attention to our appetites. —M. F. K. Fisher When my sister started burping shortly after our father died, I assumed it […]
July 1, 2010
The Many Faces of Bea
There are hundreds of her. Here: she poses in shimmering gold, with burnished curls and closed eyes.1 In another portrait, her gaze fades behind lavender veils. Ghostlike, she rematerializes black […]
July 1, 2010
Elegy
From the Chinese. The following essay is not merely a piece of Chinese prose; it is a bookmark entry in the canon of modern Chinese literature. Written by the famous […]
July 1, 2010
Liberty to Communicate
Excerpt from Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership* Truth Has No Thinker In the late 1740s Benjamin Franklin and three of his Philadelphia friends conducted a series of scientific […]
April 1, 2010
Ten Meditations in Poetry’s Hut
1. Let’s begin with a basic claim, not as truth or fact, but as possibility: reading is a form of experience. Hands hold the book’s heft; eyes read the words; […]
January 1, 2010
Embracing My Identity: Reflections on Jorge González Camarena’s Painting El Abrazo
Red comes at me hard. Thoughts of high-pitched screams, sharp abdominal pains, crunching bones, and pierced organs, as a glimmering sword enters a brown body and comes out bloodstained. This […]