Video: Pre-Occupied
Poet Heid E. Erdrich created a visual landscape of associations and references that match the tremendous irony of how the word “occupy” can be meant. The film version of this … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Burying The Giant Alive — The Press of Denial
The American press is like a sexagenarian doctor with a factory practice who hasn’t read a medical text since his internship. His patients don’t ask, and he doesn’t tell. They … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
After writing an essay in my freshman English lit classin which I discussed James Joyce’s Ulysses as the nextlogical step for narrative after Ford Maddox Ford’sThe Good Soldier, my professor, … Continue reading
Jose Padua: On Reaching Into My Pocket For What Keeps Me Alive
Forty years ago during Easter Sunday dinner when our family friend advises us during a discussion of the state of things, “Never trust the police,” I look at his white … Continue reading
Jose Padua: A Life of Uncontrollable Urges (or Tourette’s and the Writing Life)
On a recent Sunday afternoon, as I pushed a cart in the aisle between the checkout counters and the racks of men’s shirts at Walmart, the song that went though … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Body Language of Poetry
Don’t gesticulate with your hands or make faces when speaking, the teachers at my British boarding school told me. It’s vulgar. I’m sure that this enjoinder at such an impressionable … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Why Drunken Poets Need to Procreate
If it were somehow obligatory that I sum up my existence with a single sentence—or perhaps with just a phrase and a simple image—I’d be at a loss. I would, … Continue reading
Charles Bukowski’s letter to the man who inspired him to quit his soul-sucking day job to become a writer
In 1969, the year before his fiftieth birthday, Charles Bukowski caught the attention of Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin, who offered Buk a monthly stipend of $100 to quit … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Rood Shadow
They get Jesus in a back room at the country club, tell him, Let’s get you some new clothes and could you step over there and wash your feet? Maybe … Continue reading
Gail Langstroth: Muzungu, Muzungu!
Muzungu, Muzungu! Children scream as they touch my white skin and run. Muzungu, Muzungu! December, 2012, I am in Nakuusi, Uganda, a small African village, population 180. Early each morning … Continue reading
Writeliving Interview – Campbell McGrath
Originally posted on Writeliving's Blog:
Campbell McGrath has been a major influence on my work, particularly my poetic collaborations with John F. Buckley about America on Brooklyn Arts Press.…
Writeliving Interview: Stephen Dobyns
Originally posted on Writeliving's Blog:
I was in graduate school when I picked up a copy of Velocities, a volume of new and selected poems by Stephen Dobyns. I…
Jose Padua: That Point Where Age and Confusion Approach the Meaning of the Universe
I wonder, sometimes, what difference it would have made if, in my younger years I had gotten the foundation of my education in the art of film solely by renting … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Love In A Time Of Riots
Yesterday, on National Public Radio, “And now the news from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and St. Louis.” There’s a list on which I’m proud to hear my hometown, the city I … Continue reading →