Tennessee Williams Liked To Revise ... And Revise ... And Revise

I've been reading the Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, and I loved this anecdote. I'll just share the quotation from Gore Vidal's introduction.

"Over the decades I watched Tennessee at work in Rome, Paris, Key West, New Haven . . . He worked every morning on whatever was at hand. If there was no play to be finished or new dialogue to be sent round to the theater, he would open a drawer and take out the draft of a story already written and begin to rewrite it. I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely, then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished." And went back to his typing.

As an inveterate reviser, I love this. Before I consider something even approximately finished, I have probably worked on revising it for weeks. Every time I send something out, I revise it again.

I totally understand one of the Impressionist painters, Bonnard (?) maybe, who was caught sneaking with his paints into the exhibition where his pictures were hanging, just touching it up a little.

Easy And Good Way To Make PDF Files

This is going to be just a little posting but I have been so happy with this free program I want to share. Several times lately a publisher has asked me to submit a PDF. Not wanting to spend money, I searched for free programs and found one called Cute PDF Writer. It was a quick, easy download and seems to work perfectly, at least for my simple needs. I've put a link to the site if you want to give it a try.

Creative Writing Tip: Thunder Writing

Last week I introduced you to Lightning Writing—white font, white background. Today I want to show you how to do Thunder Writing—black font, black background.

First, I’d like to think about the connotations of these two kinds of writing. Lightning Writing, as I said, is white on white. But what does white writing make you think of? Sudden illumination, jagged writing, purity and clarity? Definitely. But whiteness also makes me think of the eeriness of a deserted, weed-filled field on a hot summer day, with the buzz of unseen, unknown beings filling the air; Remember how Meursault felt in Camus’ L’Etranger in the blinding heat of the beach, leading him to an unpremeditated murder? You never dare to stare into the sun for fear of blindness. The point? When you write in white, you must open your mind to ambiguity—clarity and confusion.

You’ll experience the same abiguity when you do Thunder Writing—black on black. We often think of blackness and night as scary. Night is when the vampires and zombies come, when we feel terror trying to change an exploded tire on the expressway with all those serial killers cruising past. Sure. But night is also velvety soft, comforting and warm. It’s when you can think about things without guarding your expression. It’s time to be soft and warm in your nest of crisp sheets and blankets, for those wonderful moments of thinking before you sleep. It’s the gleam of crows’ wings and kohl to line your eyes. So when you write in black on black, consciously direct your writing toward affirmation and fear.

As with Lightning Writing, try to save your Thunder Writing without looking at it for a few days. Then you will open the document, select the text with Control + A, change it to black on white, and be amazed by what you wrote. Use it to write something consciously controlled and save it again, let it ripen.

Next week, we’ll talk about Sky Writing, Solar Writing, and Grass Writing.

Okay. Here’s how to do black on black.

Go to “Format” on the toolbar. Click on “Background.” You will see the background change to nice solid black. Then go to the “Text Color Selection” tool in the upper right (as you did for Lightning Writing) and choose “Black.” WARNING! Don’t choose “Automatic” or your text will be white, an interesting effect but not what we’re aiming for.

Start to write thunderously, with your fingers coming down firmly on the keyboard. Or begin to write stealthily, with your fingers coming down like delicate cats’ paws!

Friday's Creative Tip: Writing Soup

Today's tip is about a delicious soup that writers can easily make and only take about fifteen minutes off from their work.

The pan: I think cooking instruments should be lovely and satisfying to the cook's soul. I make this soup in a huge saute pan with a long, curving silver handle. It's so pretty you can just leave the soup in it for everybody to serve themselves.

The ingredients: Carrots cut up in round slices or those little carrot-shaped pieces you can buy in a packet. A package of fresh Swiss chard. Three or four cans of vegetable broth (stock up when it's on sale).

The recipe: Empty four cans of fragrant broth into your elegant pan. Add the carrots. Cut the stems off the Chard, wash it, and chop it into rather small pieces. Dump the veggies into the broth and heat it until the carrots are cooked the way you like them. Add some mushrooms if you like but they aren't really necessary.

Eat your delicious writers' soup. It isn't heavy, which would stifle your creativity. It is BEAUTIFUL--golden carrots, dark green Chard, light green broth. If the day is hot, cook it early and put it in the fridge because it is possibly even better cold. You will get a lot more writing done because you won't have to cook again. Just add a nice piece of vegetarian cheese and some lovely crusty whole-grain bread!

Lightning, Thunder and Fire Writing! Part I.

We’re going to start with Lightning Writing today.

Remember the joy of writing with invisible ink when you were a kid? You’d buy this ink at a novelty store and write in it. Nothing would appear on the page but when you held it up to a light bulb, the words would appear.

You can use a technological equivalent for those days when the censor is sitting on your shoulder and you’re lingering too much on what you’re writing instead of trusting yourself and moving ahead.

I’ve done this for years and was interested to hear another writer, Karen Blomain, talk about using it at a conference I recently attended. She uses the white version but I have several variations.

The idea is to write in a text you cannot see or cannot understand but which you can easily change back to your normal black Times New Roman (or whatever) on a white background.

Okay, ready to go?

First, change your font color to white with the selection tool in the upper right corner of the toolbar area. Begin to type. You will see . . . NOTHING!

This is a wonderfully freeing way to write. You will feel a closer connection between your brain and your fingers when you write without the in-between appearance of the printed text. Your thoughts will fly freer. You can come back and censor, tweak, re-arrange later. That’s the part of writing that should come later, divorced from the act of creationg. Give it a try.

Now that you know how to do this, be really brave and start a folder in which to save your unseen writing. Don't peek. It’s okay to give it a retrieval name you can see. You’ll want to call it up later, select the text, and change it to black.

After writing something, I always put it “in the drawer” for a few days, at least, or better, a few weeks before I come back to it. My mind will have been working on it in another way and my thoughts and eye are sharper to revise.

I’m going to give you a few days to try this and then I’ll post again, with some exciting variations.

Facebook Writing Community Rocks!

I've been fortunate enough to achieve some writing successes the last several days: A first for the literary short-short at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, a second in the category of Science Fiction, Imaginative Fiction and the Supernatural at the same conference and being a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press for my short story collection, Kissing Jesus. It felt a little egocentric to post these accolades on Facebook (although other writers do the same). The resulting congratulations from others, especially writers who know the loneliness and difficulty of the writing life, brought me a lot of joy. Now one of my Facebook friends, Joolz Denby, has even started a Facebook cafe and treats us to a new kind of coffe or tea along with delicious cakes every day. If I can't have a writers' cafe down the street, where we all stop in for our coffee and absinthe at the end of a hard day of writing, I'll be happy with my Facebook friends. Thanks, all!

Iranians To Follow On Twitter

StopAhmad and Emoltzan are good people to follow on Twitter for Iranian news as it happens. You can probably find more. I would think to be cautious even on Twitter. Who knows who is posting. The government could be posting under an assumed posture. Read and evaluate!

Twitter To Iran

I am getting tweets from Iranian citizens, DIRECTLY from Iranian citizens. For example, a woman just posted that the police knocked on her door at 2:00 a.m. and took her daughter away. Her husband is now having heart pains because of this. We should all make an effort to get our news this way, direct from the citizens, because it's hard to know what's what when the news is filtered by the media.

Nabokov On Writing-Colum McCann, NYT

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

Writing Aloud is Dead

Tonight I attended the final performance of the 10-year-run of one of the finest theatrical endeavors in the country. For the past ten years, eight under the direction of David Sanders and the last two under the direction of Rebecca Wright, a season of dramatized short fiction by local and national writers has been blessed with sold-out performances at InterAct Theatre on Sansom Street in downtown Philadelphia.

Over the years, I was lucky to have three of my short stories in the series. I met many other writers and actors who brought the stories to vivid life on the stage of Interact Theatre and who have become friends.

We ended the final performance with reminiscences and drank a final toast to a great series, a great theatre, great directors, great actors, and, from my point of view, best of all, great writers. We drank a toast there and I came home and drank another. When a theatrical series gives its final performance, it's like a death and so we had a wake for Writing Aloud.

Skyping From The Hospital

I am in love with technology. Here I am, waiting in a hospital for my dear one to have an operation, tapped into a wireless network and even able to Skype Europe. Some people become irritated with those who use their technology (cell phones) in public but I kind of like that. It's nice to see people wanting to stay close to the people they care for. As long as they're not driving and texting, why not? I think it's better not to use cell phones for long chats while driving, but it's not a whole lot different from just talking to someone in the car, as long as they're using a headset. As far as talking on cell phones in trains and so on, I love it, being privy to all that information, participating vicariously in people's glorious and messy lives. On occasion, I have even entered into the conversation, whispering some advice to the person talking and definitely talking the problem over after, entering into people's lives for the space of the ride. I have yet to have anybody get angry; they seem complimented to have me interested. Little do they know I write it all down as soon as possible and save it for a novel.

Mother's Day haibun, 2009

A day celebrating my biological role. More than that, I guess. My sociological role as well. All my failures kindly overlooked. As if I were the final winner of the American Idol of Motherhood show. As if I danced with the star who was the Platonic role model of mothers, her hands of steel and nimble legs using me as a marionette who appears to be dancing just as well as she does. Surrounded by faces who have decided not to tell me my cancer is beyond redemption, that the doctor has sewed me back together so the show can go on. Now the night's curtain has fallen. Wipe off the makeup, let my cup of hot milk tremble, no longer try to walk with a vigorous and springy step. Oh, how kind are the ones who surround me, how kind is the darkness.

still in the moon’s night

chamomile sheets and pillow

outside wind rises

Stop cruelty to humans. It starts with animals.

This is a link to the Animal Rights TV of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

I think cruelty toward other people often starts with tolerating cruelty to animals. As little children, most of us enjoy the walking, talking, kindly animals in children's literature. At the same time, we're taught to eat meat. I wonder what kind of shock children experience when they realize they're actually eating their animal friends. Since meat is given to them by their adult caretakers, almost from the beginning, we learn to tolerate this ambiguity.

In my opinion, this toleration of cruelty lays the ground for the toleration of cruelty to any being, even humans, whom we perceive as "other." Put this ethical need for the elimination of meat eating together with the economic tragedy of how meat-eating is helping to destroy the resources of the planet, and this issue is something we really need to think about. Do yourself a favor and watch some of these PETA videos for self-education!

I'll be reading at Robin's on May 6

Robin's is the most venerable bookstore in Philadelphia. Well, maybe there are other venerable bookstores but Robin's is beloved by readers and writers. You can find interesting readings and workshops almost every night of the week and buy some good books in the bargain. Robin's now occupies the second floor of the building and incorporates the Moonstone Art Center. I'll be reading poetry there on Wednesday evening at 7:00 p. m. (like I need to tell you it's p.m.). My co-reader will be Betti Kahn and I'm going to bring my famous home-baked Bards' Bars (secret recipe), so show up for food for the body and mind! We'll have books to sell and sign.

Nadia Anjuman, Afghan poet, killed (2005) for her poetry

Woman poet ‘slain for her verse’

Christina Lamb

SHE risked torture, imprisonment, perhaps even death to study literature and write poetry in secret under the Taliban. Last week, when she should have been celebrating the success of her first book, Nadia Anjuman, was beaten to death in Herat, apparently murdered by her husband.

The 25-year-old Afghan had garnered wide praise in literary circles for the book Gule Dudi — Dark Flower — and was at work on a second volume.

Friends say her family was furious, believing that the publication of poetry by a woman about love and beauty had brought shame on it.

Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle is a winner in Britain's equivalent of American Idol. Because she doesn't fit the standard beauty requirements of a show like this, the judges smirked and sniggered when she walked onstage. When she began to sing, the ethereal beauty of her voice caused them (very rapidly) to treat her with respect. It's an inspiring story, but why does an ordinary person, or even someone totally lacking in beauty, have to have talent to command respect? Here's an interesting summary of her story.

Poet Jilly Dybka's Poetry Hut Blog Analyzes Amazon's Takeover Bid

Amazon & POD (Provoke On Demand)

I posted some links last week regarding Amazon.com’s attempt to force publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge print-on-demand service. Or the book won’t be available for sale on Amazon. I think Amazon took some non-BookSurge POD book’s “buy” buttons off, too. Is that still the case? My friend Scott’s book is only available through the used book interface now. (Click on title to read whole article.)

Poetry Presses Using Lulu As Printer

Following up on my previous post, I did a quick search for poetry presses that might be using Lulu as their printer and came up immediately with this one, Poets Press. It makes a lot of sense. Turn over the printing chores to someone else, who can also provide help with graphic design for covers, proofreading and so on. The editors can then concentrate on reading manuscripts, selecting good work and working with poets. Small runs make so much sense. I think a poet would have to think about rights since with POD, technically a book would stay in print forever.

Poetry Presses Using Lulu

I notice at least one small (and good) poetry press, FutureCycle, is switching to Lulu.com as its publisher. I found this interesting because I had always thought of Lulu as place for self-publication, which I am guardedly in favor of, but this press seems to be using them simply as a printer. Lulu books are very well done, from the ones I have seen, and certainly POD is the way to go for micro-runs of books. Has anyone else come across this?

Help Protect Baby Seals From Murder

PETA Prime: Celebrating Kind Choices: Oh, Canada

From the story: But Canada isn’t taking this lying down. In a misguided and dirty effort to make the slaughter seem more palatable, they’ve implemented new “standards,” including requiring that sealers wait 60 seconds before skinning the seals in order to “ensure” that they are dead. I’m sorry, but bludgeoning gentle animals, impaling them, dragging them across the ice, and ripping off their skin after a 60-second pulse check-if anyone is actually watching-does not fit any realistic definition of “humane.” And the new regulations don’t require a speck of oversight.

How Humane Are You?

This is a story (click on the title) about laboratory torture of chimpanzees and monkeys. Do we have a right to make these creatures lives' years (sometimes as many as fifty years) of endless torment in order to help make our lives safer? Tests can often be performed on tissue samples instead of live animals. Many animals are tortured simply to make sure cosmetics and personal care products are safe for humans. I don't want to use a shampoo that has been rubbed into the eyes of restrained animals. Do you? There are companies that offer alternatives that have not be tested on animals. Do a little research and stop sponsoring torture. Please sign this petition to try to get a pain-free retirement for some elderly chimpanzees.

Writing Prompts

I've found that some of my best writing comes from the simplest beginnings. As an encouragement to all of us to give this approach a try, I've just put a gadget on this blog that will take you to "The One-Minute Writer," a blog that supplies readers with a prompt for one-minute writing every day. Once you get in the habit of doing this, you'll find you come up with hundreds of your own prompts. Get a Moleskine and carry it around with you! You'll soon find yourself writing every minute you can find. "I never have time to write" will no longer be an excuse when all that is asked of you is . . . a minute's worth of writing. You'll find you want to go back to these when you have five, fifteen, sixty minutes and expand them into longer pieces. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO! Leave them as one-minute pieces if you like, make them a journal of your thoughts and observations. If you do want to play with them a bit, try the "Expansion From Within" approach. After each sentence you have written, write a sentence expanding that idea. Do this over and over. If you want company, head over to the TOMW site and see what other people are doing.

Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions

Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool -- chicagotribune.com

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool -- chicagotribune.com

Channeling Skype

Having a child who lives in Scotland, and telephone rates being what they are, I am happy to satisfy my need of mother-talk via Skype, using our computers as telephones and paying exactly nothing. Yes, you heard me correctly. Zero. Nada. Rien.

However, today I realized why I always think of my Great-Aunt (or maybe that’s Great-Great-Aunt) Clementine every time I call my daughter.

Clemmie, as she was called, was married to Uncle George, who had charged up a hill with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American (so-called) War.. Clemmie brewed up her week’s worth of coffee all at once and stored it in jars under the sink. Her great romance, before Uncle George, had been at the St. Louis World’s Fair. She always carried $3000.00 in her purse and all her rings in a little bag around her neck.

When she went missing from time to time, everybody raced to the bus station and pulled her off the bus St. Louis-bound. Eventually, long after Uncle George joined Teddy Roosevelt, Aunt Clemmie passed on to that great World’s Fair in the sky.

She was a home-loving gal, however, and one of the great-nieces had a bit of a gift for psychic things. One of the most exciting events I remember from my childhood was when the telephone call would came, “Get over here quick. Clemmie’s trying to come through!” Then we all got to sit around in a circle in a darkened room and try to decipher the bits of disconnected babble that was Clemmie trying to find out what was going on , or to tell us something important about the afterlife. We never got the message clearly enough to find out. There would be some noises, “H-h-h-huh...” “Hello, Aunt Clemmie, is that you? We’ve got a bad connection. Try again.”

We would watch the dancing balls of light and brush bits of ectoplasm off our faces and shout back and forth to no avail for a couple of hours, asking questions about the afterlife and getting busts of stutter and babble in return.

This would go on some time until we gave up, coffee cake and mugs of cocoa came out and we all went home feeling we’d been in touch with something stately and grave.

Oh, right, that’s why I remember Clemmie when I Skype with my daughter. “Mu-mu-mu-mom, is that yyyyyyyyyoooooooooouuuuuuuuuu? Can you hu-hear-gobble-squawk-fadeout?” And I reply, “We have a bad connection. Can you hear me?” “Yes, I can hear you now. Can you hear me?” Sort of like the early days of CB radio. Remember that? “X calling Y. Are you receiving me, Y?” I remember my father going on like that all evening. My Skype call again.

But it’s a blessing. A good part of the time, it works. No matter how happy we are to talk, the conversation is sweetened by the fact that I’m not paying by the minute. Sometimes, there are extra-special glitches, like last night, when I realized I was saying this: “Aunt Clemmie? Is that you? Get off the line! I’m trying to talk to my daughter.” When this happens, we hang up and try again and fifty percent of the time, it works!

Poetry Readings As Sacred Space

I am still in the afterglow of my featured reading at Robin’s Bookstore last night,. Robin’s is Philadelphia’s revered independent bookstore and literary Mecca. How grateful I am when I have a poetry reading and people actually come to hear me read. Let out sharp little intakes of breath. Smile. Laugh. Say afterward that THEY ACTUALLY ENJOYED MY WORK

I think we take it too much for granted that in small rooms in bookstores, coffeehouses, church basements, and on street corners all over the United States (and I suspect all over the world), people gather to get naked together via the words they have written. Being basically a shy person who longs for the life of a cloistered nun, I find it difficult to face a reading but I become filled with delight as the evening goes on and I realize people are listening carefully to these words the duende brought to me.

In addition, for me, one of the most joyous parts of a reading, one I always look forward to, is the open reading that follows the featured reading. If I am not the featured reader, I often go to other people’s readings and participate in the open mike. While we're on the subject, let me say there is a special place in hell for featured readers who do not have the courtesy to stay and hear the poems of those who have come to hear them. These people are strapped in slippery folding chairs beside microphones that read a monotonous alphabet to them for all eternity. (Oh, pray for mercy—even the self-obsessed may hope for redemption.) But I love the opens as much as the features, although in a different way.

The people who read in the open often tend to be newbies, those who haven’t published much yet, students, people in mid- or late-life who have just written their first poem, people who have written for the drawer a la Emily Dickinson for years and are just now creeping out of their room and venturing to share work, 13-year-olds who have just discovered haiku, cowpokes and mechanics and elderly, tattooed Hell’s Angels who pull out a poem written in pencil on the back of an old envelope..

Such work is often not polished but it invariably contains elements of naked truth. You are being privileged glimpses within someone’s thoughts and souls that I have not encountered in any other place. For some it stops there but you start to have a family feeling simply because you have come to know a lot about this person. For as many years as you encounter such people, they will continue to read similar poems, which you appreciate for their content. For others, you notice over the years that they are studying and learning more about the craft, which of course allows their thoughts to strike deeper within the listeners’ hearts.

Readings, whether in subterranean drippy caverns or lofty rooms where through Palladian windows you see the tops of trees, are sacred places, where we gather to enact over and over the rituals that we hope will open the numinous to us, even as do churches, theatres and maternity wards full of newborn babies.

Good Summary of Palin's So-Called Achievements

Here's a sample of the text of this editorial. It's a good, clear summary of many of the distortions of truth and actual lies Palin has been saying.

"Relax Sarah; you’re not going to Washington quite yet. So here is a little news flash for you. You will not get a good opinion from the media unless you deserve one. So far, you do not and attacking the media for your own shortcomings is not going to help your situation. It is not the media’s fault for example that you are under an ethics investigation with a special counsel who says he has over 20 emails and voice mails from you and your people trying to coerce someone into firing your brother in law. It is not the media’s fault that your lawyer has now tried to move this investigation to a board, which consists of three people you have appointed; a clear conflict of interest. It is not the media’s fault Sarah, when it is discovered that you are the Earmark Queen of Alaska, sucking in 27 million dollars for your little town of 6,500 people, while claiming to be a “reformer”. It is not the fault of the media that there is video of you attributing the war in Iraq to God. It is not the fault of the media that your pastor is on record as twisting scripture to fit his own political agenda. It is likewise, not the fault of the media that you claim to be a reformer but haven’t reformed anything."

georgebushjohnmccainhugging.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x359 pixels)

georgebushjohnmccainhugging.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x359 pixels)

Hormel Torture of Pigs--Consider Becoming A Vegetarian

..

Call on Hormel to make changes for animals!

Time to rediscover the glory of chapbooks | Books | guardian.co.uk

Time to rediscover the glory of chapbooks | Books | guardian.co.uk

The booklets have been spreading the literary word for more than 450 years and they still have the power to delight and inform in equal measure

It is sometimes easy to forget about chapbooks in an era of immediate online publishing and personalised literary blogs - a modern environment where any poem, review or piece of short fiction can be published the moment it is finished. Yet, against all the odds, somewhere within this grip of modernity, the age-old chapbook continues to delight and inform.

Listology: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die: 1 to 785 (My Progress: 1)

Not long ago, I shared with you a list of 1000 books you must read before you die. Now, in case you have a little time left over from your reading, here is a similar list of paintings. Start making plane reservations!

Listology: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die: 1 to 785 (My Progress: 1)

The wisdom of writer Jeanette Winterson

"All I can say is that there is no escape from the night sea voyage and when it comes, that dark ship with no crew and no destination, you must board it, not knowing when the journey will end or what its purpose might be."

Jeanette Winterson is not only a luminous and intellectual novelist but a wise human being, deeply in touch with nature as well as with human life. I think you will find it well worth your time to read her monthly blog as well as to discover all the other riches on her site. If you subscribe, you'll get an e-mail every month letting you know the new column is up.

Reading this will whet your appetite to rush out to your nearest bookstore!

E. Christopher Ott's Review of Demon Love Story

Okay, I admit it. Every once in a while I Google my own name to see if there's anything new. To my surprise, I found this review of a short story I published in Identity Theory about a year ago. I don't know you, Mr. Ott, but I like you very very much and I thank you for liking my story. If readers would like to read it, there's a link to this story right here on my blog, as well as links to a lot of published poetry, short fiction and essays.

Demon Love Story by Tree Riesener is a lyric piece of magical realism in a domestic setting. Through the use of a loose second-person point of view, the narrator tells the story of abandoning a long-term, comfortable relationship with Satan to pursue the excitement of a life of affairs and relationships with more suitable amorous interests. But after working through the end of the relationship with the Demon Lover in very real terms, the narrator’s new life playing the field eventually finds the way back to a relationship with a changed, improved Satan,
which is yet a life with Satan nonetheless.

The primary attraction of this piece is the skilful use of Satan to personify a relationship that, while mature and developed, lacks the romance that this life should embody. The narrative manages to capture very quickly the essence of new, vibrant love appearing for somebody already in a committed arrangement and contrast it against a pre-existing love of convenience. Particularly stunning is the detailed, contemporary feel of the everyday events catalogued to illustrate the end of a relationship and the adventure of entering new romantic frontiers as well as how, though all new love gives way to old love, the essential nature of a mature relationship can change with experience.

The URCHIN Series

The URCHIN series

Celebrate Mina Loy--an unconventional life and mysterious poetry. Join a crowd of whoever shows up at 2nd and Market, Philadelphia, 7:30. Bring Loy's poems to read. Hosted by CA Conrad. Down in the subway if it rains! Look for the signs!

Farewell to Solzhenitsyn

This link will lead you to a video of the sorrowful farewell of the Solzhenitsyn family and the world to a towering literary figure. In an age where Western funerals have often become occasions for humorous memories by friends of whoever has died and even stand-up comedy is considered appropriate, it is a sobering reflection to see that in some places grief is acknowledged and a funeral is an occasion for a final good-bye.

Readings webjournal: Ravi Shankar - Vikings and Yellow Submarines

An excellent and thought-provoking essay on the subject of the so-called new formalism.

. . . It’s when the new form begins to bear weight, to enable a tradition, to become institutionalized, that the aesthetic object passes over from the category of the avant-garde into that of formalism. That’s part of the point Paul Mann was making in his book, “The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde,” when he writes, “there has never been a project for delegitimizing cultural practice that did not turn immediately, or sooner, into a means of legitimation…the avant-garde has in fact served, in most cases quite unwittingly, as an instrument for the incorporation of its own marginality. The avant-garde is outside of the inside, the leading edge of the mainstream.” Ouch! That’s a rather grim view of the commodification of the avant-garde and serves to collapse the distance we presume exists between it and formalism, but the generative act itself and its subsequent deployment by the earliest practitioners is where the potentialities of the future are balanced by the subsistence of the past. . . .

Readings webjournal: Ravi Shankar - Vikings and Yellow Submarines