And just now, this man in somewhat dirty jeans, unshaven for days, and with a stack of papers that did not look like religious leaflets but like the notebooks I have kept with me for years. Writing notebooks, dog-eared and rough on the edges from constant carry. “Chora” he says. “Chora.”
Warsaw Dispatch: Nie Rozumiem. Rozumiem. Read More »
* Paula Mendoza *
When it comes to writing, talking, or even thinking about the Philippines, I’m overcome by a gaping blankness.
* Zhanna Slor *
Enough already! First they start giving trophies to children who lose basketball games so that they don’t feel bad, now this. Creation is not its own reward, unless you’re really and truly creating for your eyes only. And in that case—by all means, paint away, just please don’t show me. Art, real art, is for other people. If it wasn’t, bookstores would be empty, art galleries would not exist, and you would never hear music at coffee shops, malls, bars, concert halls. Saying that you’ve created something for yourself only and yet posting it on Facebook is just a way of avoiding responsibility for its greatness or lack thereof.
… or Just Watch “Girls” Read More »
* Claire Skinner *
How can we reconcile the body’s desires with the rationale of the brain?
Rereading Lady Chatterley’s Lover Read More »
* Mary Camille Beckman *
I read Sestets, reread it, reread it again. And when rereading wasn’t enough, I disassembled every sestet in the book so that I might put them back together again: I translated each poem into its opposite, one by one, line by line.
On Rereading and Rewriting Sestets by Charles Wright Read More »
* Eric McDowell *
Thus the dilemma inherent in the name “free jazz”: “jazz” that’s “free” of what supposedly makes jazz jazz.
Rewriting the Dictionary: On Free Jazz Read More »
* fiction by Kelsey Ronan *
Behind her, Tianna laughs. “Listen to her,” she guffaws. She repeats “dark with anguishhh,” in her white girl voice, the words theatrically elongated. “Who you tryna be?” Tianna’s laughter ripples around the room. Monae turns quickly back and stares down at her desk. Her face burns. Miss McCorkle ineffectively repeats, “Students, students,” but all the eighth graders are so relieved to be pulled away from this impossible poem and given something familiar to ridicule that they laugh and laugh.
“The Fireside Poets,” by Kelsey Ronan Read More »
When sticking it out reaches mission-critical proportions of unmanageableness.
Warsaw Dispatch: Antidote to the Season of Hell Read More »
* Nicholas Johnson *
It is probably not entirely inaccurate to say that artists have always been interested in methods of altering our perceptions of reality and along similar lines that artists have often sought methods of altering their own in search of new methods of representation. With art work ranging from 1959 to 2013, Reflections From a Damaged Life: An Exhibition on Psychedelia at Raven Row in London, is an attempt by curator Lars Bang Larsen to reframe psychedelia as a mode of art making that is more critical in its approach than the institution shunning, free-love and poster paint aesthetics of a bygone hippie counter-culture.
Psychedelic Revision: An Exhibition on Psychedelia @ Raven Row, London Read More »
* A.L. Major *
I’ve come to expect offensive portrayals of blackness during Halloween, but this past year’s trend of impersonating Trayvon Martin seemed unusually cruel. I’ve never understood why certain white people love black face. I can only imagine those who love blackface or find the use of “blackface” funny enjoy dehumanizing blackness. Blackface has been used for racial parody since the early 1800s, and slowly over the years Halloween has become a season for racial parody within a larger social framework that thrives on dehumanizing blackness for its own survival. Blackness as monstrous. I’ve been thinking about this as a concept more and more, especially this Halloween as I perused photos of people who could not have possibly seen and understood Trayvon Martin as a human being.
