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Everyone has them—the books that we loved that got only cursory critical attention, if any.  The friends who managed to get the books finally, finally into print, only to hear a few grains of sand shifting in the long silence as they drive to the liquor store to buy themselves the only champagne that will…

Mood: a predominant emotion; disposition; a conscious state of mind. Etymologically, “mood” at its root is anger, anger and its sometime sidekick, courage, though, the book cautions us, mood’s ultimate origin is unknown.  Because who can really say where a mood comes from?  Construction on the freeway wastes an hour of my time, now I’m…

Alice Munro has been a popular literary writer of short stories for decades. She moves from subtle interior discomfort to the most blatant of coincidences without apology. “Simon’s Luck” is a short story from the book that could be called her only novel: The Beggar Maid. The book could also be called a collection of…

It feels as though every posting starts somewhere else, and this is no exception.  I’ve been reading one of Angela’s “Why I Reread…” postings, in the midst of state and federal budget cuts which, far from rereading much of anything, seem designed to keep the world from reading most texts even once.  As in most…

What reaches for the sun.  What turns green panes flat to the zenith.  A green order in the bay window, quatrefoil.  Egg-toothed cotyledon. ~ There’s something to know and it can’t be known and I have to know it.  It wakes me up in the morning, shivers me through the day.  My soul fleeth unto…

I sometimes take comfort in categorizations. The world can always be divided into two populations, it can be obnoxiously insisted: those who send thank-you notes and those who don’t, those who have seen American Idol and those who haven’t…those who get to class on time and those who can’t, for some reason, and on and…

As a change from the didacticism and mostly-benign aesthetic dictatorship of my recent posts, and before I review anything (though that’s coming), perhaps it’s time I ask a question instead of attempting to answer any. Within recent memory I had cause—or thought I had, anyway—to post a link on my Facebook account to a Mary…

What is sexism, exactly?  What is sexist writing? Like Justice Potter Stewart, we are pretty sure we know it when we see it.  And, indeed, some of it is easy to see.  Women persistently denied interiority, animalized, simplified, fetishized, objectified.  Women sadistically sexualized and demeaned.  Women presented positively in passive roles, negatively in active.  Women…

I’ll go out on a limb, here, as the only person I know who doesn’t love Seinfeld. I watched it quite a bit (in-laws, no cable) and got tickled, sometimes. I’ve been impressed by the way the show appeals to folks across all the demographics I’ve been involved with—from writers to marketers, from paralegals to…