Of Silence and Song doesn’t just reward close, attentive reading. In fact, it demands it. Of Silence and Song is a highly lyric book, advancing a series of impressions rather than the march of a central, tightly reasoned argument.
Required Reading: Dan Beachy-Quick’s “Of Silence and Song” Read More »
The Fall offers storytelling lessons valuable to all writers and artists, which is one reason I’m repeatedly drawn to its magic and wonder.
“The Fall”: A Storytelling Masterpiece of Epic Proportions Read More »
“Unless one practices medicine or works with medical literature, one is unlikely to encounter the enormous mass of words used to describe the things that go wrong with us. But the words are out there, multisyllabic and waiting.”
To Describe Our World: An Interview with Kevin O’Rourke Read More »
“Several friends and journalists have noted the absence of text in Singapore. I have the most immense respect for the authority of words; that’s why I’ve not allowed any into the book.”
Somewhere Unanticipated: An Interview with Nguan Read More »
“You don’t need an MFA to be a good writer, but you need readers who understand what you are trying to do, and won’t let you get away with not doing that.”
On “Psalms for the Wreckage”: An Interview with Joshua Young Read More »
“In particular with these essays, I don’t think they can be finished in the sense that they represent an imprint, a moment of motherhood in my life. It’s hard for me not to want to rewrite aspects of them as my thinking or experience changes.”
“A Woman is a Woman Until She is a Mother”: An Interview with Anna Prushinskaya Read More »
Confessional poetry—particularly work that deals with the end of a relationship—is exceptionally tricky to pull off without coming across as navel-gazing and self-centered. Edith, however, is a remarkable work of pathos, using the inward gaze to illuminate both the self and everything around that self.
A Bird on Fire, Stuffed Inside Another Normal-Looking Bird: Meg Freitag’s “Edith” Read More »
We don’t owe it to anyone to make our writing nice, or easy, or palatable. Maybe we should start asking ourselves who we’re protecting when we pan away, and why we’re protecting them.
Abject Horror: The Gratuitous Honesty of Hanya Yanagihara and Stephen King Read More »
The portrait these letters paint of an artist trying to hone his craft at all costs transforms them from obscure Proustiana into a richer portrait of Proust the man, neighbor, and writer.
Written in 1958 but given due packaging in a new book from Song Cave, Lionel Ziprin’s “Songs for Schizoid Siblings” are, at the simplest assessment, a historical oddity.
Sweetmeats to Cure: Lionel Ziprin’s “Songs for Schizoid Siblings” Read More »
