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: 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
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
Djelloul Marbrook: Don’t Believe the Libel that Poets Don’t Engage in Politics
Watching, we won’t see leaves break through the smooth finality of surface. This strophe from Rusty Morrison’s poem, “History of Seed,”* explains to a wondrous extent the way we are beguiled … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Tunnels of Gaza Thwarted Alexander the Great
The Five Ws of 19th Century journalism fall far short of the demands of 21st Century journalism and yet they remain the effective diktat of newsrooms. Let me show you … Continue reading
Let’s Hear It for Ball-Busting Poetry About a World Men Have Ruined!
Let’s have dangerous, trouble-making, side-sinister, cantankerous, mean poetry. Let`s have pure-damn evil poetry. Looking out my kitchen window, having watched a red-tailed hawk stoop and carry off a baby rabbit, … Continue reading
Video: The Elephant’s Garden
From Australian animator Felix Colgrave, a beautiful film about the balance of nature.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Questions in July
Where does terror come from? Possibly from people who are terrified. Why does it hurt more when the killed were boys on a beach? They had the breath of the sea in their … 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 →