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 »
* Kristie Kachler *
I’ve been learning German off and on for almost two years now, and sometimes the language seems to have batted its pretty eyes at me and turned away. Like any doomed pairing worth its salt, we share an irreconcilable incompatibility: I’m precise when precision is important, but at a point I leave stray details alone so that I can read and sleep and stuff. Unfortunately, German requires its learners to be always on duty with an unerring, unflagging attention to detail. The grammar is so involved that I’ve started to suspect you have to practice it from birth to have any hope of mastering it[1]. Strictures of word order plague beginners whose verbs are always burning off like fog before the end of a relative clause, while the chicaneries of declinations ensure that it’s almost impossible for even an advanced learner to string together, say, three perfectly accurate sentences. There’s probably a German proverb that speaks to the shame of overcomplicating a thing that could be simple, but no one has taught it to me yet. All the native speakers I know are too busy hin-ning and her-ring, heraus-ing and hinauf-ing away. To listen in on this is to entertain visions of the nimblest governess running to and fro in an Alpine wonderland, and then to admit that The Sound of Music made too deep an impression, and then to suspect an impending seizure if you have to listen much longer.
Something Like Groping Around In The Dark In A Half-Familiar House Read More »
I’ve always felt that Seamus Heaney would have preferred not to be the poet of the Troubles, Irishman for the World.
Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013 Read More »
* A.L. Major *
I’ve been told by more than one writer friend that to write a novel you must every day chain yourself to your chair for as long as necessary. So that’s what I do. I sit. On average I might spend eight hours sitting—though four of those hours I’m probably checking Facebook. A few months ago a friend posted this article by Susan Orleans about the perils of sitting and how sitting can cause obesity, high blood sugar, blood pressure, excess body fat. While reading, my initial thought was, “Wow. This is proof! My job is killing me.” I became overwhelmed by a certain kind of panic that felt to me very American— only those who live in privileged countries, after all, have to the time to worry about how many hours they are sitting during the day.
Exploring Different Pathways Read More »
