* Eric McDowell *
So maybe I too could make something essential of my own incidental struggle to parse the OuLiPo, take that which I could—probably—have hidden (would you have thought I could read French? understand calculus?) and, instead, hide behind it, looking through.
Why I Have Not Written Any of My OuLiPo Blog Posts Read More »
I want to write a blog post about Everything. The blog post to end all blog posts, the blog post that will unify all the properties of blog posts. It seems, at a time like now, not only necessary but unavoidable, or at least the attempt seems unavoidable.
All The World Is You And Me* Read More »
Back “home,” I eat with objects layered with a history, of which I am acutely aware—Mother’s and Grandmother’s dishes, a southern heritage of cast iron cooking, an antique dining table passed down. A meal is always, even if I would choose otherwise, a journey back.
Warsaw Dispatch: Cultivating an Aesthetic Present Read More »
I recently ran across an article in The Onion titled, “Nine Things Introverts Do All The Time.” It starts off innocently enough with some harmless long-lens photography and emphatic fan-letter-writing, but soon spins it into a dark, sociopathic narrative of stalking and abduction that ends in a fiery crescendo of homicide and regret!
The Introvert’s Lament Read More »
* Nicholas Johnson * That I cannot remember the first time I saw Gillian Carnegie’s Black Square is a testament to its creeping, subtle complexity. It is a simple painting to describe: a monochrome black square of canvas just under two meters. Hidden in the black is a landscape delineated only by variations in brushwork, which means it is an extremely difficult painting to photograph. The first time I saw Black Square was in a photograph, a jpeg on the internet, and it wasn’t until this past summer that I was able to see it on a wall, in the flesh, at the Tate in London during their ‘Looking at the View’ exhibition (2013).
* Kaveh Bassiri *
Over the last few weeks, I have been following the social media posts of Iran’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Javad Zarif. Much has been written on the vital role of social networking during the Iranian Green Movement — how it helped to organize people and disseminate information. The Green Movement was even called the first Twitter or Facebook revolution. In the aftermath, Iran banned these sites, which probably reinforced their importance. I don’t want to rehash what others have already said — the role of social media in Iranian politics has been exaggerated — but I am interested in the innovative and progressive ways Zarif has been able to turn these banned tools into a resource for the government. What seemed to be a revolutionary venue outside of the regime may be re-purposed into a pathway for reform from the inside. Reading Zarif’s Facebook page lets you know more about the Iranian people than any article in an American or Iranian newspaper. It is like eavesdropping on conversations in cafes and streets. As this conversation unfolds in Persian, allow me to translate it for you.
Facebook’s Most Popular Iranian Friend Read More »
* Kevin Haworth * These are big stories from low culture, and at a time when my children have begun to retreat into their own personal reading worlds, I’m grateful to have these books to bring them back to me. Anybody who reads to their own children knows the value of a big, beautiful book, spread out on your lap, with a child on each side, gazing at the illustrations.
* Gina Balibrera *
What I desired, and what I continue to desire, is the willful shape. I desire not those words that do the work of building, of containing, of safeguarding, but those which Ukrainian-Brazilian bad girl writer Clarice Lispector desires when she writes “I want to grab hold of the ‘is’ of the thing,” in Água Viva. I began to feel Lispector’s “perfect animal” of Near to the Wild Heart inside of me; I became a bad, bad girl.
* Mary Camille Beckman *
Even if Joseph Cornell’s artworks—his signature “shadow box” constructions, his montages (what he termed his two-dimensional collages), and his films—are visual, not literary, Robert Motherwell, abstract expressionist and friend and pen pal of Cornell, claimed that “his true parallels are not to be found among the painters and sculptors, but among our best poets.”
Homage to the Romantic Ballet: The Poetics of Joseph Cornell Read More »
* Claire Skinner *
But who actually daydreams? If you’re anything like me, you might feel the anxious urge to constantly be doing something. A day of commuting, meetings, emailing, and running errands feels productive. I’m tired after it. I can reassure myself that I’ve done something, that I’m worthy of waking again tomorrow. To lounge around on the sofa, drifting in and out of naps, gazing at a white rose blooming outside the window feels slothful, lazy, and (shall I say it?) frightening. It’s as if I’m asking the God of Free Market Economics to throw a lightning bolt at my daydreaming head. I’m frightened because if I give myself over to reverie, it may mean that I’ve accomplished nothing, that I’ve gotten nowhere, that I’m still me, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow: flawed, bad at math.
The Poetics of Reverie Read More »
