Of ElsewhereI miss this blog. I have, as you have seen, found it hard to keep up my momentum, because I’m usually working on so many projects at once: ever-shifting pieces of writing and art, of course, and also a newcomer pursuit: coding. Yes, I’ve taught myself to program using mostly free resources and I am […]
…there are souls so infirm and so accustomed to busying themselves with outside affairs that nothing can be done for them, and it seems as though they are incapable of entering within themselves at all. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers What do the following four reads — Allie […]
I haven’t read John Gardner’s fiction, though I have a copy of Grendel now (a ratty, cheap used copy from the bookstore where I work, with this sublimely horrible blurb: “…warm, friendly, compassionate….a kind of Medieval King Kong!”), but I really enjoy his writing advice. This book is no exception. I won’t be able to […]
As my first book of the year, I read Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just. I am very glad I read it and I liked it a lot — though, as Scarry says about beauty itself, I find it thought-provoking rather than (simply) true; and the beauty Scarry works to embody and describe is […]
There is no way to know everything. In today’s information-rich society, there is no way even to know everything that is known. My instincts (which are sometimes, I grant you, pessimistic) tell me there is no way even to form an intelligent-sounding opinion about (I would estimate) 90% of the things you have to have some opinion […]
First, I regret to admit that I have not gotten through Tom Bradley’s “chymical illuminations” of Mark Vincenz’s This Wasted Land, the even more hilarious and dextrous footnotes to the hilarious and dextrous post(post-post-post?)modern send-up of Eliot’s The Waste Land. (I started my review here.) I am not sure I have anything too useful to say about […]
The second time through Charles Williams’ masterpiece Taliessin Through Logres, I find that I experience the poems as more difficult than I did the first time, in 2013. This is reassuring, because everyone says they are difficult, and I know that I can sometimes read too lightly to notice even when I’m failing to understand something […]
Working in the children’s section of a bookstore, I see a lot of adults with children, and I enjoy thinking about the dynamics of parenting and how best to do it. Today, for this cycle’s non-poetry post, I plan to talk about parents who keep a close rein on their children’s reading, which I tend […]
We all know it’s hard to get published. My intermittent efforts show this (I am, as of August, trying to submit poems every month—haven’t submitted any for October yet but preparing), and the process has been very tough on many of my friends who’ve been through it more than I have. I think this is […]
Quickie today, but I made another zine! This one, Of Unreal Identities, is more about the pictures than the words. It’s a selection of self-portraits, loosely defined, interspersed with a few comments on identity, some mine and some others’. It’s also a quarter of an 8.5 x 11 sheet in size rather than a half, […]
Of Elsewhere 