We all know the importance of details, how they can make or break a poem, essay, or story. But what details do you have the hardest time with? For me it’s colors. I’m completely colorblind. Colors are hard for me to write because I don’t have natural associations to work with, so I often end [...]
Archive for March, 2010
Details, Details
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Achromatopsia, Details on March 17, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Recognizable Minority Names… Really?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Claire Light, PANK on March 17, 2010 | 7 Comments »
About a month ago, writer Claire Light blogged about the dearth of writers of color submitting to mainstream magazines and publishers and proceeded to make a pretty interesting (and to my mind, kind of crazy) statement with regard to writing that I’ve thought about and thought about over the past several weeks and haven’t been [...]
On the American Orient: John Vernon
Posted in Uncategorized on March 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
We host a fair amount of writers at Lake Forest College. Our 6th Annual Lake Forest Literary Festival this year (this past March 2-4) found Lily Hoang, Shelley Jackson, Teresa Carmody, Vanessa Place, Gretchen E. Henderson, Angela Jackson, and S.L. Wisenberg all gracing our stage. Tonight, we welcome novelist John Vernon–someone you may not know [...]
Copyright? Why?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged copyright, creative commons, electronic frontier foundation on March 17, 2010 | 14 Comments »
I’ve been meaning to get this discussion started for a while. Most books I read, art I look at, music I listen to (independent, corporate, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, or otherwise) still bears that scarlet encircled ‘C.’ And, if doesn’t and no language to the contrary is included, the laws of America ensure that copyright applies by default. [...]
Free Dialogue
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Free Dialogue on March 16, 2010 | 4 Comments »
“Do you go over to his house and play with him alone? Then you’re not his friend.” – A mother talking to her 5-ish-year-old son on the street this morning. For what it’s worth, this is the first of a series in which I will provide you with brilliant found dialogue from the streets of [...]
For art!
Posted in Uncategorized on March 16, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner famously had himself strapped to a ship’s mast in order to experience the storm that inspired his painting Snow Storm at Sea (a painting which seems in retrospect to prefigure impressionism). Have you ever done anything crazy in the name of “research” for a piece of writing?
I Shot the Moon, Calamari Press, 2 / 39, THE HOUR SETS
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Calamari Press, J. A. Tyler, Michael C. Boyko on March 15, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Click through for my review of THE HOUR SETS by Michael C. Boyko, the second in my full-press review series of Calamari books.
Don’t Stop Reading / At Swim-Two-Birds
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged At Swim-Two-Birds, August Kleinzahler, Flann O'Brien on March 15, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Here is poet August Kleinzahler on teaching: I read to them and have them read and I have them do some exercises and I discourage them from bringing in poems of their own. This usually results in a mutiny by week three or four and they usually send a committee of students to my office [...]
Reading Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, part 3
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Batman, DC Comics, Frank Miller, Lynn Varley, scott mccloud, The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, The Mark of Zorro, Understanding Comics on March 15, 2010 | 14 Comments »
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 Part one of this series surveyed Miller’s comics work prior to his landmark 1986 miniseries Batman: The Dark Knight Returns; part two summarized the innovations in printing technology that Miller and his colorist Lynn Varley [...]
Unattributed Quotes #2
Posted in Uncategorized on March 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The teaching of the Academy separates, as the whole idea of the country separates, the notion of art-education from other education, and when you have made that one fundamental mistake, all others follow. You teach a young man to manage his chalk and his brush — not always that — but having done that, you [...]
What Is Experimental Art?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alec Empire, Arnold Schönberg, avant-garde, Diego Velázquez, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, experimental art, Frank Kermode, Ghost in the Shell, Harry Potter, Henri de Saint-Simon, Impressionism, innovation, J.K. Rowling, James Peterson, John Cage, La Monte Young, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Matei Călinescu, Minimalism, Olinde Rodrigues, outsider art, Philip Glass, Roman Jakobson, Salon des Refusés, serialist music, Stan Brakhage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, the dominant, The Matrix, Titian, Wachowski on March 12, 2010 | 9 Comments »
One typically hears unusual art called three different things, often interchangeably: Innovative Avant-Garde Experimental But what do these three words mean? Do they mean the same thing? I don’t think so, and in this post I’ll point out some basic differences between them. I’ll also define what I think experimental art essentially is, and how [...]
Robert Coover’s New Novel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Noir, Robert Coover on March 12, 2010 | 14 Comments »
I just finished reading Robert Coover’s Noir, and it’s excellent. It’s another of his metafictional takes on the mystery genre. Since I just finished my review of it, I won’t say much more except that I think it’s one of the year’s best efforts so far, and that I highly recommend it.
Found poetry
Posted in Uncategorized on March 12, 2010 | 17 Comments »
I don’t think anyone’s posted a good piece of found poetry lately. Here’s one called “Types of Bitches” for your consideration. An excerpt: 10) Bitches that be trying to steal your man 11) Hoochie looking bitches 12) Ain’t got no damn sense bitches 13) Stupid bitches that act dumb 14) Bitches who can only get [...]
Underrated Lesbian Books
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, curve magazine, lesbians, newpages on March 11, 2010 | 13 Comments »
NewPages posted today about Curve Magazine’s “10 Most Underrated Lesbian Books,” which got me thinking about my book and how it is a lesbian book but resists such labeling. Only if a reader has read Written On the Body, and only if s/he maintains that the narrator in it is a woman, will s/he understand [...]
John Berger on Publicity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged John Berger on March 11, 2010 | 3 Comments »
From Ways of Seeing, a 1972 book of essays on art and culture by Booker-prize winner John Berger: Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The [...]
Alphabet Playpen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged app, digital literature, iphone, Jörg Piringer, sound poetry, toy on March 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
We know our ABCs. The words we type every day combine and recombine letters in hundreds of thousands of patterns. We play with the sounds letters make, stringing together consonant and dissonant phrases. But rarely do we play with letters just for the heck of it, for the sheer enjoyment of uttering RRRRRRRRRR! and eeeeeeeee! [...]
Women on Men
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Paula Fox on March 10, 2010 | 17 Comments »
Recently I’ve gloried in the prose of some of my favorite female writers: Alice Munro, Paula Fox, Christine Schutt, Diane Williams, Kim Chinquee and Lydia Davis. The way they see men fascinates me. Here is an excerpt from Davis’ novel The End of the Story. The narrator is talking about a younger man she had [...]
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