September 25, 2015
Is Paris Still Paris?
“In a beautiful turn of phrase, Hugo von Hofmannsthal called [this city] ‘a landscape built of pure life.’ And at work in the attraction it exercises on people is the […]
June 18, 2015
Teach This (Part II)
Yesterday afternoon, I hit “Publish” on a blog post reflecting on widely anthologized and widely taught poems. My intention was not to criticize those poems (there are many good reasons […]
May 15, 2015
Writing In and Speaking Out
Earlier this month, in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the community unrest and outcry that followed in Baltimore, Writers in Baltimore Schools (WBS), […]
April 28, 2015
everywhere/everywhere/everywhere
I am in Baltimore and I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say because I am trying to listen. I am trying to listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates: Now, […]
August 27, 2014
Language, Race, and Reclamation
Aukeem Ballard, a friend and former student who is now a teacher himself, knows well the multiple and multivalent powers of language. His interest in how language works, how it […]
December 12, 2013
The Future of an Identity
Even the bitterest hater of religion would concede it is exceedingly unlikely to vanish–not least because antireligious ideologues end up behaving like a religious community, with group-forming behavior (and group […]
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 30, 2013
The Poetics of Campus Security Alerts
Someone needs to write the book on a new genre of literature gripping the land. It is a short form; its characters are stock; its storylines nearly never begin in […]
September 9, 2013
Human Beings Writing about Human Beings
I am, I am told, an “Indian-American” writer, and my novels are Indian-American novels. Sometimes they’re called “immigrant fiction,” even though I’ve never immigrated from or to anywhere. My […]
August 31, 2013
Not Guilty–Of Course
Out of the hurricane of words published in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, I found Robin D.G. Kelley’s essay, “The U.S. v. Trayvon Martin: How the System Worked,” to […]
February 20, 2013
William Styron’s Paper Skin, etc.
The top five surprises from the newly released Selected Letters of William Styron (Random House, 2012): 5. A yacht party with JFK and Jackie. In a letter to his father in […]
March 6, 2012
A Craft Note on The Craft Note
I spent this past weekend at the annual AWP Conference in Chicago, alternately overstimulated by the crowd in the bookfair and by the conversations in and around the panels. I […]