blog
Blood Meridian occasionally features untranslated Spanish dialogue. We poor souls with nary an inkling as to the language are reduced to either: Those of us with a powerful need to know everything are forced to choose the last option, but few things are as frustrating as interrupting the reading experience. Learning a whole new language […]
He clenched the music-box as he approached. Black-barked trees laden with scores of softly chittering bats stretched their knuckles forlornly to the stars. In the center of the clearing was a stone altar, and the bishop. She was beautiful — inhumanly so — but with a grey cast, as if someone had taken a knife […]
We were sixteen when we promised each other we would never die. The night was warm and cloudless. Backs on the grass, eyes on the stars, we exchanged murmuring vows. Her eyes were red-rimmed, fresh from the funeral. She spoke in a voice low and intense. She wanted to read all the books, travel to […]
Anotha day anotha dolla … week two has just wrapped up at Inkhaven, and I can’t say my enthusiasm has diminished in the least. I read aloud some Wallace Stevens for our wine, cheese, and poetry night (it attracted many more Eliot fans than I expected); experimented with “miracle berries,” which temporarily make sour food […]
His room was messier than usual, not that I cared. Clothes were strewn about. A half-eaten pound cake sat in a chair. In the corner hung a thick curtain, which partially concealed a black box with wires sticking out. On it was an old-timey numeral display and a big red button begging to be pressed. […]
(Or, 652 words about 1) In 1965, the world watched with bated breath as a new record was set in the cutthroat arena of minimalist poetry. The incumbent — whose reign had survived unchallenged for nearly half a century — was Strickland Gillilan’s “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes,” sometimes called “Fleas,” consisting of an […]
If you care about art, and discussing art, then few things are as frustrating as someone retreating into “well, it’s all subjective anyways.” The phrase is a thought-terminating cliche par excellence. It’s true that the individual aesthetic experience is subjective, but this is a small part of art, and often not even that interesting. A […]
A garden gnome fixed Sarah with a beady stare. They were littered everywhere; she’d nearly tripped twice already. Short ones, fat ones, red ones, blue … they colonized everything from the porch to the gate, poking out from the flowerbeds and standing guard along the driveway. She’d rehearsed what to say many times over the […]
What happens when you run out of things to read? Consider the zoomer aesthete, stricken by the twin afflictions of leviathan appetite and particular tastes. They haven’t read everything, but they’ve certainly read everything they care to. Discerning enough to deem their well tapped dry, whereto look they now, yon unknown frontier? Why, the mysterious […]
In 1886 a fellow by the name of A. E. Housman was in a bind. It turned out that his poems were too depressing to publish! To give you some idea, I paged through the collection and took note of his subjects: (sharp inhale) … and closing out with: Housman was forced to self-publish the […]