Is this the kitchen where she worked and thought
Is that the loft where their bodies fell
into each other The nail where the mirror
hung the shelf where her college books
eyed her aslant
Those stairs would her bare feet have felt?
“The Painter’s House,” by Adrienne Rich Read More »
Excerpts and curios from around the web:
Mary Kelly on the diapers that made her an icon, one man’s journey to recover the records of his youth, Judith Beheading Holofernes … again, and a reissue of a Marianne Moore classic. Plus: Details on Lincoln in the Bardo, a forthcoming novel from George Saunders.
Maternal Detritus, Lost Vinyl, Caravaggios in the Attic, and more Read More »
Today, when I read student work that relies on a clever conceit—such as a piece of fiction that is, ultimately, an elaborate joke; when I read stories that are technically functional but devoid of insights, I cringe. I prefer a piece that is overly sentimental but that is trying to get at something true to the undergraduate’s experience, such as love, longing, heartbreak.
Should We Teach Compassion In Creative Writing? Read More »
I first caught wind of Fort Wayne, Indiana’s almost-obliteration after reading Michael Martone’s essay/story, “Fort Wayne Is Seventh On Hitler’s List.” As a Fort Wayne native, I was shocked by the title’s claim. Impressed, too—at least a little—that our city was once important enough to warrant Hitler’s wrath. Admittedly, being seventh on a bombing list is a bit of a dubious honor, and, as the Fort Wayne Visitors Bureau knows all too well, one that hardly translates to tourist dollars. Yet what we lack in tourism we make up for with hometown pride; the old timers are still known to puff out their chests and recount stories about the time we were nearly in Hitler’s crosshairs. So why did Hitler allegedly take an interest in our city?
Unsolved Histories: Hitler, Histrionics, and My Hometown’s Almost-Obliteration Read More »
We discover virtually ourselves and others through the language of the brain. And virtual reality is not a physical world but a language the brain receives and translates. And if virtual reality is a language, and God created the world, according to the Bible, by speaking “It is good” to the formless turned “formed,” perhaps we and our universe are virtual realities of a divine verbal order…
Virtual Reality Is the Real… Read More »
The pinnacle of Duchamp’s legend is the moment he submitted Fountain to the exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists. The exhibition, just like Salon des Indépendants in Paris, was supposed to be open to any artist, but the urinal was rejected. In some ways, Sunset Over the Adriatic and Fountain are two jokes with the same punch line. These open, democratic salons, however well meaning, couldn’t really be open to everything. The impulse of fumisme and later Dada was to poke and prod and offend until the invisible borders of decorum and good taste were revealed. Lolo accomplished this by having his artwork accepted to the salon. Duchamp, repeating the prank seven years later, made much the same point when his artwork was rejected.
Lolo the Donkey and the Avant-Garde That Never Was: Part 2 Read More »
I agree, it’s a hot topic. But only one? Look around, there’s a wide range. Take my own, for instance. I get up in the morning. My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant. I dump in the fuel and away goes my topic, my topical topic, my controversial topic, my capacious topic, my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly-behaved topic, my vulgar topic, my outrageous topic, my aging topic, my topic that is out of the question and anyway still can’t spell, in its oversized coat and worn winter boots, scuttling along the sidewalk as if it were flesh and blood, hunting for what’s out there, an avocado, an alderman, an adjective, hungry as ever.
“The Female Body,” by Margaret Atwood Read More »
Excerpts and curios from around the web:
Your favorite authors rendered in food, a new Marvel comic by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and a few Gothic classics you may have missed. Plus: Hilton Als gets real about art and intimacy: “You have to learn to write about love in order to write. It’s the most fundamental thing, and if you don’t write about it then you are missing something that is so profound—how could you even carry on? It is a very profound thing to touch another human being.”
Milton in Cheese, ‘Black Panther’ Gets a Reboot, and more Read More »
Italo Calvino never visited China, though Invisible Cities does. Franz Kafka and Saul Bellow never visited locations that featured prominently in their novels. Even Shakespeare is guilty: his biographers have found no evidence of him ever leaving England, and so his myriad works set in Italy must have been based on speculation and research. While there is a concern that not researching a place can lead to a writer fetishizing or misrepresenting it, the facts stand that often writers are more than able to get away with it.
Writing Place: You Had To Be There? Read More »
The after-effect of the force of the archive is a kind of ghosting: it hints too uncannily at history reified, at history returned to the present. The voice is physically indexed, it leaves a residue in a way it simply can’t in the ordination of the library. Nowhere can one feel this more than in the archives of poetry read aloud, that most ephemeral event.
Sound and Light: A Quick Tour of Recorded Poetry Archives Read More »
