April 5, 2019
On Mixed Metaphors in Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin
To almost all writers today, the term “mixed metaphor” has only negative connotations, referring to a classic type of bad and thoughtless writing, when a writer without realizing it employs […]
February 13, 2019
On George Orwell and Sensory Detail in Writing
In a previous blog post on long sentences, I critiqued George Orwell’s famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” specifically because I felt its list of rules was too restrictive, […]
December 12, 2018
In Defense of Long Sentences
When it comes to prose style in contemporary literature, no two works have had a greater influence than George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” and Strunk and […]
June 8, 2018
The Quest for the Enchanted Writing Tip
Many writers spend their whole careers chasing that enchanted writing tip that will make them extraordinary, and there’s certainly no shortage of craft advice. Some authors (I’m looking at you, […]
May 21, 2018
A Writer’s Capacity for Selfishness
During my time in the MFA, I met a woman a few years younger than me at the bar after a reading. She was also a writer, but not in […]
January 15, 2017
An Open Letter from the Only Poet on the Professor Watchlist
Dear Charlie Kirk, Founder of Turning Point USA: It’s not every day that an American poet can address someone who thinks he is dangerous. For that alone I should thank […]
December 6, 2013
Policing the Magical Real: Unarmed Man Shoots Two Women
Imagine this story. An unarmed man behaves erratically in the middle of the street, cars weaving around him and swerving to avoid each other. The flashing screens of 50 feet […]
September 22, 2012
Shakespeare’s body, Shakespeare’s ghost: erasure, canonicity, and the apophatic self
I’ll begin with a claim: that every text produces in its writer a sense of the self becoming unglued—that one creates, or expunges, meaning in the form of a literary […]
March 8, 2012
Mix Tape: My Dystopia Is Better Than Yours
Huxley had the nerve to write Orwell and claim that Brave New World trumped 1984. The John D’Agata fact-checking brouhaha continues. Check out Ned Stuckey-French’s Dear John letter from the AWP lyric […]
July 23, 2010
Short Takes
Celebrating fifty years, this one’s for the mockingbirds Once again, this blog’s to blame, they’re saying it’s time to take it slow [warning: no take backs if you end up […]