Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
If David Bezmozgis’s novel, The Free World, were a drink, it would be a scotch, not peaty or smoky, but smooth and well-aged. It would have none of the surprising roughness of Laphroaig, tending more to the clean finish of Highland Park. As a drink, it would be safe, conventional, respectable.
I confess it: I sometimes vanity google. My name is sufficiently common that enhancing my google rankings has become an exercise in frustration. However, it passes beyond frustration when I discover that I’m outranked by a dead poet no one has ever heard of.
I think I’m in love with the woman in the picture frame I bought. Do picture frame models ever have stalkers?
It isn’t exactly news to point out that publishing is in crisis. Now that digital text can be delivered in a format which offers a viable substitute for the physical book, there are fears that the publishing industry will experience an upheaval of biblical proportions.
Why has this calm stolen over mewhen I lost countless years, not to rage alone, nor to joy, but to both,jittering between the two like the lines on an EEG,the REM patterns of a cold-sweat nightmare”s sleep? Why have I found a stillness in this hourwhen waters crash on eastern shores bearing bodies out to…
Almost as if to illustrate my two previous posts that propose a new poetics of authenticity, the latest issue of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine came careening through my window. To bring you up to speed, I have previously described “authenticity” as the 21st century’s favourite yardstick for measuring the worth of a poem. The notion of “authenticity”…
When I was feeling my way into the art of blogging, one of my first posts was a short piece on The Mirror and the Lamp, M.H. Abrams’ critical masterpiece on modern poetics. Although poetics may seem like an arcane subject, what gives Abrams’ book enduring relevance is that he’s really writing about something bigger. He’s writing about how we communicate or, even before that, how we think.
At the letterbox, Roger pulled out a wad of flyers, most of them advertising local businesses—palm readers, tea leave readers, tarot card readers, and Madame Zignault, emergency consultations available on request.
Sometimes, when I read, it feels as if the words were always already written inside me and the author has simply drawn them to my attention. That happens most often to me with poetry and large novels, rarely with short stories.
I installed a wordpress plugin called FD Word Statistics which applies three metrics on the backend and is supposed to help me gauge the readability of my blog posts.
Of all the things Heighton stares and stares at, the thing he fixes most intensely is the matter of justice. He wants to know why bad people sometimes thrive while the just are routinely crucified.
I’ve committed an act of theft and, if I’m lucky, I’ll get away with it. I’ve stolen some lives and a piece of property and I’ve hawked them for a novel. My novel is called The Land and I plan to release it on May 7th or thereabouts. Here’s what I did: I took four people (my sister-in-law, her husband, and their two boys), I ran off with their organic farm, and tossed them all into a bag along with a few unruly ideas to spice things up.
Curio is an echapbook originally serialized at uncannyvalleypress.com, it is now available for kindle or in epub format. The cost is a tweet or post to your facebook wall (i.e. it’s free).
I’ve noticed that as people age, they have more fun reminiscing with their peers than with their children and grandchildren. When my parents get together with their friends and start talking about people they knew in school or things that happened before I was born, it’s feels like I’m standing outside in the cold and staring through the window at the warmth inside.