I rarely watch The Simpsons (and I really haven’t had cable for a few years), but somehow I always stumble across the show’s Halloween specials. This year I heard some talk on the interweb about Guillermo del Toro taking over. If you’re not familiar with del Toro, he is a Mexican writer/director/producer who has had […]
The question Larkin asks in the first line of “Days” is so simple, it’s almost silly. ‘What are days for?’ you can almost hear a child asking. The simple answer Larkin doesn’t give us: days, counted off from the first one, make up our life. Instead, he responds that days are something that engulf us. […]
I dropped Elsewhere by Richard Russo into the “return here” slot at my library the other day with some hesitation. My shabby bookmark sat more than halfway to the end of Russo’s memoir but I really could not go on. It’s rare that I stop reading a book, even if I’m bored. I anticipate that […]
James Schuyler, ‘Past is Past’ Imagine this poem as a self-contained moment — like pretending time is still when you gaze at an old photo. “Salute” freezes you for several lines and then pushes you right out of the memory . You realize the past is gone. You cherish it and you move on. If you […]
Chicago is a fun city to visit when the weather’s nice and you’re ready for an adventure. I attended a beautiful wedding in Bloomingdale, Ill. (late September 2013), and then took the train into downtown Chicago. Our first hotel, which was actually a resort, claimed to have “Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired” architecture. It wasn’t until we […]
Photo taken in the late 19th century by Matthew Brady // via Wikimedia. Come, said my Soul Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,) That should I after death invisibly return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chants resuming,(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, […]
Kurt Vonnegut was one of my favorite writers when I was in high school, so I trust his judgement on writing a little bit. The following tips are taken from the “Self-Assessment” section of the wiki on Kurt Vonnegut. In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story: […]
You, who lets three coins strike the counter because you are afraid to feel the dirt caked in the ridges, are not ready for the large hands of the cashier.
I write consciously when water taps to mark each sleepless moment when curtains can’t contain the flame of a full moon nor the glare of the street lamps. I write when impulse overwhelms sleep and verbs float in the air fighting for air space with bleating sheep too loud. One by one I shoot them down.
you test the edges with your foot and find out how far you can tip-toe around the flora before you catch the fear of falling and your tired shoes release themselves over to the force of gravity so strong you’re sure the laces will untie themselves and like a boa constricting its prey slither down into […]