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Finding a Common Language
Thursday April 17, 2008
Last week, I left my solitary writing table in Washington, DC, and took the train to Boston to visit a friend whose creative journey began with classical piano performance and now, a short lifetime later, has found a waystation in video art. Reunited, she was eager to show me the fruits of her current project. As she guided me through the low rabbit warren of graduate studios....
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Remembering Howard Nemerov in National Poetry Month
Wednesday April 16, 2008
I pray Congress never declares a “National Creative Nonfiction Month.” National month-hood seems, for the most part, public admission of an honorable, if forlorn, marginality, stuffy afternoon teas held for the aged maiden aunts of a country’s consciousness....
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Is Poetry Prayer?
Tuesday April 15, 2008
At a recent retreat that I was leading on meditating with poetry, a participant came up to me at break and said “but you’re going to distinguish poetry from prayer, aren’t you?—talk about how poetry is not the same as prayer?” I thought about this during the break, and flipped through the notebook I carry around containing quotes by poets on how they see their craft.
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The Sturgeon's Leap
Monday April 14, 2008
I was stacking wood Saturday when my plumber, Bud, stopped by. He was checking on the work of Loquacious Hank, his new subcontractor, who had replaced my kitchen ceiling. This related to the resolution of what Bud tactfully refers to as my plumbing “dilemmas,” which came with the house and never end. We talked about Bud’s upcoming operation. Then we got on to mortality....
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The Agony and Ecstasy of Creation, or, Why I Wish I Was Batman
Friday April 11, 2008
A few weeks ago I likened God to a kind of cosmic director, and myself to a player on His stage. If that metaphor truly holds water, then it’s high time for an intermission. After taking a brief respite after my church’s Easter play—detailed in my previous post—I plunged into a project perhaps even more daunting than my applications to graduate schools last fall....
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Current Issue
Issue 57
The sculpture of Richard Serra, Franz Wright on the Gospels, interview with Ron Hansen, fiction by Pinckney Benedict
Good Letters: The Image Blog
