Summer is a season of midnight. At least that’s how it feels to me. No matter how much sun I soak up it is night and night alone that gives Summer it’s special feeling of (sorry to the strict Lacanians) jouissance, a kind of pleasure-in-defiance.
In Praise of Exhaustion Read More »
Among some of my oldest relatives, there’s a custom of recording weddings gifts given and received in order to ensure that no family is left feeling cheated.
I have been reading Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics at a speed that indicates I must be reading dot by dot.
Transitioning the Great Sadness Read More »
While my graduate writing program at UofM is on break for the summer, I’ve adopted Chicago as my temporary home.
From Inspiration to Art: Abstract Sculpture in Chicago (Part I) Read More »
In the arts, repetition put to smart use bears fruit almost instantly. Take a phrase of music or a line of poetry and read it, hum it, then repeat it. Again and again. Crack the circle open and you find a spiral, spinning, a single pattern among many.
Of Artichokes and Lightning Bolts Read More »
There is a lot to talk about when I call my father in India from Cuba. The calls are expensive, but the connection is crystalline. Nonetheless, it is hard to stay focused when my consciousness ping-pongs between a Malayali courtyard and the passage way of a Havana apartment building.
A Life in Three Acts: Lakshmi Is on the Line Read More »
It’s that difficult time of year when almost everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is celebrating the return of the sun and I’m longing for morning drizzles and cool, overcast afternoons.
In which I admit to wishing we could skip straight to September Read More »
I’ve been haunted for much of this month by a bird. Not a real bird, but an animal depicted in “The Documents of Spring,” a poem by Rick Barot that appears in the latest issue of The Asian American Literary Review, which is by far the fattest literary journal to have landed on my doorstep in the past year.
Not Just for Asian American Readers: The Asian American Literary Review Read More »
William Langland is old school. He’s Medieval. About seven years ago I read the 7500 line “B-Text” version of his masterpiece, Piers Plowman.
Where’d You Get Your Information From, Huh? Read More »
There’s no disputing that I’m a tightly wound person. Once, I was so nervous about serving beer at a party I threw in my parents’ basement, that I numbered the beer cans and made people sign them out. Years later, in the middle of a Mardi Gras Crawfish Boil in New Orleans, I snuck into the host’s house to check my email for updates about a class project.
Shivasana Your Heart Out: Yoga and the Writing Life Read More »
