May 7, 2015
How the West Inverted its Literary Values
In a true missing-the-forest-for-the-trees phenomenon, modern literary criticism has left unremarked, to my knowledge at least, the totally anomalous body of “great literature” that has come out of Europe and […]
February 7, 2015
#poetinspaceproject
We’ve sent animals and plants into outer space and observed them. We’ve sent scientists of various disciplines to run experiments—that is, to do their work in that environment and […]
September 5, 2014
Political Poetry
Should poets speak truth to power? Is it their role to court censorship, to call out social injustices, to commentate, to dare reveal political iniquity for what it is […]
February 8, 2014
An Alternate Second Half of the Aeneid
A story about Virgil on his deathbed, possibly apocryphal, tells how he ordered his literary executors to destroy the Aeneid because it was imperfect; that he preferred that the poem […]
December 28, 2013
Epic Fail
The most inflated reputation in literary history came about as the result of genuine literary merit crossed with a transnational empire and language. Many people would assume I speak of […]
October 8, 2013
The Endgame and the Spin
In all high-minded or “holy” group violence, you’ll see two factors at play: The Endgame and the Spin. (Which one of these two gets emphasized and reviled depends on […]
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 […]
September 2, 2013
Drug Culture and the Nature of an Elect
To “open the doors of perception,” to recognize the futility of getting and spending and focus on experiencing the moment, to access superhuman reserves of strength or love—such are […]
October 19, 2012
Now or Never: The Writer and the Age
One thing that’s underestimated about writing is how now-or-never it is, how suddenly it crowds out of a few people. Many of the most powerful, permanent “ages” in literature have […]