November 6, 2017
Motherhood as a Form of Haunting
Every Halloween I like to ponder how we’re all haunted houses, attended always by the ghosts of future and past, misunderstood monsters, mad women in our own attics. As a […]
October 31, 2015
Trick-or-Poem: A Halloween List
So many of my favorite poems aim to unsettle or conjure or raise the dead. There are, of course, the truly classic Halloween go-to poems like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Robert Service’s […]
October 31, 2015
Short Takes
Last-Minute Halloween Costume Ideas are over at BuzzFeed, PopSugar and Ranker. Want to check out how your favorite writers have dressed up throughout the ages? Oh, yes, Susan Sontag as Teddy Bear […]
October 30, 2015
28 Days Later and Other Nightmares: On What Frightens Us
One of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen is Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, a horror flick that popularized the idea of a “fast-moving” zombie. Boyle’s walking dead are […]
October 31, 2014
Boo
It’s Halloween; let’s light the cauldron. Shakespeare’s weird sisters, when making their hell-broth, tossed in “Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog”—and, […]
October 31, 2013
The Stars Did What They Do: “Heaven and Earth,” Considered
“Heaven and Earth,” the penultimate poem in Carl Phillips’ Double Shadow, offers up vertigo, suffering, and fear—and all in the first four lines. The poem’s title, perhaps, alludes to the […]