"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."
---Kirkus
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.
It’s hard to know how to either quantify or qualify universalism, because so many communities make a claim to at least a cultural universalism that obscures interconnections with other communities. Truth (although the word “truth” is rarely used) becomes the cornerstone for an enclosure for-to put it in vernacular-a fandom. This also includes the fandom […]
Thu, December 5 2013 » Fiction, Life Studies, Poetry » No Comments
‘Jack Spicer did not reserve his critique of literary journals to “major” venues. In fact, he was outspoken on all forms of literary production, high and low. After receiving an unsolicited copy of the independent newsletter Floating Bear, for instance, Spicer responds by politely asking them not to send another issue and proceeds to critique […]
Mon, October 14 2013 » Poetry » No Comments
Be a writer. Opportunities exist. You will be rewarded. Youth is important at first, especially when you are young. Those ambitions will serve you well in college. Your precocity-especially if you are a man-gives you a natural base for success at writing. Precocious ideas become an extension of maleness. But DON’T WORRY-even when you get […]
Sat, March 30 2013 » Fiction, Poetry » 1 Comment
In an age of unending information, basing one’s work on a past of referentials can seem foolhardy (in America). One, educations are getting worse. Two, even nominally good educations will tend to miss a lot. We are no longer in medieval universities. There is little use (or should this be in quote marks?)” in including […]
Sat, August 4 2012 » ?!?!?, Fiction, Poetry » 3 Comments
“Like many people, Marx’s critique of capital was my first structuralist revelation, the first time I thought, oh my, structure, it’s controlling everything! But of course nuance is key here. You know how gloomy you get when you first realize you are determined? Whether you feel determined by patriarchy or capitalism or whatever, a gloom […]
Thu, May 31 2012 » Poetry » No Comments
This poem by Welsh Catholic artist and writer David Jones (1895-1974) is one of the more remarkable long-form poems I’ve read in awhile. Probably best known in America for his World War I hybrid ficiton-poem piece In Parentheses, The Anathemata was first published in 1952. It is subtitled “fragments of an attempted writing”, and is […]
Mon, January 23 2012 » Poetry » No Comments
(a sort of companion piece to “The Men”) The Myth An empty picturebook contains a rhetorical question Would you buy a hole if you knew it was haunted Joes arise from the flank They have phones they have axes It’s a pretty decent crowd They knock the wind out A red limb points out: The […]
Sun, October 16 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
I had written this poem in the spring, but it seems apropos to post it now… WHY WE’RE NOT IN THE STREETS weighed down by November snow these pines have broken my child is not an open book snow falling on an iceless lake this is the secret salt lights lead up the cabin stairs […]
Sun, October 2 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
After turning in my new novel (of Vermeer), it’s nice to switch for a while to poetry. I’ve been pecking away at this long quasi-narrative poem called “Gog of Minnesota” for a few years now. At about 50 pages in, this is what the Wordle (I keep trying to spell it Worlde) of it is-an […]
Sun, September 11 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
Wed, February 9 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
Yes, another one. Revising this to the drum generator in 4/4 time was actually very helpful. Always good to have a new hobby.
Mon, February 7 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
Goofing around with YouTube, random beat generators, open source sample databases, and poem fragments in iambic tetrameter will lead to this: Definitely the “first pancake is always the lumpiest” syndrome going on here, but there you go.
Mon, February 7 2011 » ?!?!?, Poetry » No Comments
(This is more “drafty,” I guess…but these poems have been my enjambed journalings of late.) John’s World I’m not a beloved disciple. What is the definition? file tide lost, once remembered John’s world A prayer dislocates That hounds us. I’m an affection addict, there’s no getting around it. You and I are not in Jerusalem, […]
Fri, January 28 2011 » Poetry » No Comments
In the Vulgate I don’t want to be fine. The desperation of a presence incites. the existent secrets in a coffeehouse jam band, in the fundraiser for a child’s cancer (a pancake dinner, a silent auction) a flyer, and the strip mall will last for a while, maybe past my life. Are we to spurn […]
Sun, January 16 2011 » Poetry » 2 Comments
I came across these notes on a book of Richard Diebenkorn‘s paintings, and thought that they have a certain transference to writing, especially poetry. Happy new year! Notes to myself on beginning a painting 1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion. 2. […]
Mon, January 3 2011 » Poetry » 2 Comments
Thu, December 23 2010 » Poetry » No Comments
(But wait there’s more. I’m writing prose as well, I swear. This is from a form known as a ballade, not to be confused with a power ballad.) Version 2 What does it add? pearls, moon rob Sounds; There calling forward my cousin… forgiveness for all human mobs!! (rapt>> apart in common muslin) Garden resistant […]
Wed, October 13 2010 » Poetry » No Comments
These poems, in between prose bouts, are helping me work through things that I don’t discern yet. The different yearnings couple with the disparate styles. One mood is not like the other. Quatrains between poems can be unalike as well. There are inside-out narratives that aren’t secrets. The Whippoorwills *first baptist air The trees of […]
Tue, October 12 2010 » Poetry » No Comments
The Men The men came out of the woods And we were children And didn’t know what to do to them We watched them from the window How would they die In the cold We thought They were walking toward us We closed the blinds We are not here The farmhouse is not here The […]
Tue, October 5 2010 » Poetry » 1 Comment
While gardening yesterday, I came across a vegetational oddity that was both grotesque and poignant. I was weeding the lower tier of our terraced garden, where our radiant tulips are in full apotheosis. However, near one of them, a suet feeder (i.e., a small rectangular cage) somehow had fallen into the garden thickets. Lost in […]
Sun, April 18 2010 » Fiction, Life Studies, Poetry » 3 Comments
