The Voice that is Great Within Us

About the time Henry initiated the Plumbline School, Ron Silliman was drawing up lists, one of which indicated that Hayden Carruth “isn’t much read” these days, a judgment I started out to dispute, then thought, “Oh, what the hell,” and let it drop. Many of Carruth’s books are in fact in print — there are [...]

Interview in Saigon Online

There is an interview with me regarding my upcoming trip to Vietnam in Saigon Online. Conducted in English, the piece was translated into Vietnamese by my friend Ly Lan. Here is the English version:
Question: You have been coming to Vietnam since the 1990s and you lived for a year in Hanoi as a Fulbright scholar. [...]

This Broke My Heart

Suicide runs in families, but Sylvia Plath’s son Nicholas Hughes had apparently made a successful life for himself outside the glare of his mother’s myth. Now, suffering from depression, he has committed suicide. A specialist in river ecology and fish, he was a respected biologist in Alaska. “On a memorial page . . .  Lauren [...]

Spring Birds

The first Canada geese came back about ten days ago and more have now established themselves on the island in the river near the bridge. A couple of days ago the red wing blackbirds came back en masse, filling the still-bare maple trees and setting up a huge racket. Just now, I watched a bald [...]

Cold and Bright

Cold and bright this morning, with a skim of fresh ice on the river. The trees are still bare. The terriers got me up at dawn — just before, actually — and I saw a waning crescent moon in a cold blue-black sky. The Canada geese returned yesterday, though, and they were already setting up [...]

This Is Your Brain On Poetry

I’m not big on biological reductionism when it comes to the arts, especially when the evolutionary biologists start talking about the “evolutionary value” of this or that cultural practice, making up their little just-so stories. But I was intrigued the other day by this article describing the way the brain processes jokes. It occurred to [...]

The Old Populism

What with all the new populism going around, I’d just like to lay claim to a little of the old populism myself. To wit:
I don’t want your millions, Mister,
I don’t want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.
Now, I don’t want your Rolls-Royce, Mister,
I don’t want [...]

More Books on Writing Fiction

A few more books for the beginning fiction writer — or for the poet long in the tooth who decides to give fiction writing a try — starting with a couple of good anthologies:
The Story Behind the Story – Andrea Barrett & Peter Turchi: This is a good anthology of short stories by many of [...]

Counterintuitive

This item in the NY Times caught my attention yesterday because I am writing a story in which a religious woman is dying. According to the study quoted, very devout people request more heroic measures to extend life than those who are not religious. One would have thought otherwise, given that the afterlife should be [...]

Books on Writing Fiction

When I first began writing poetry as a teenager, I could not get enough of books like John Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean? I was interested in the technical nuts and bolts of writing and at the time the Ciardi book and a couple of others were the only things available. As my competence [...]

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