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We spend our lives avoiding conflict, and then we reach academia. On the playground we’re told to make peace, but in the classroom we’re praised for our thesis statement that makes an “argument,” that introduces “tension,” that “complicates” a previous notion. Conflict becomes, all of a sudden, the engine of every good story. During discussion,…
Few images are more boilerplate in capturing the parental role of ushering a child towards independence than that of parent teaching a child how to ride a bike—the pushing, the holding, the letting go, the tears. In “Once You Learn, You Never Forget” (Cimarron Review), Anthony Varallo resurrects this image from cliché into a complicated…
Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I’ll be waiting; all that’s left to do is run. You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess, It’s a love story, baby, just say, “Yes.” Taylor Swift left out the part about Romeo and Juliet dying, though. Why does the Romeo and Juliet story continue…
When you’re tired of the same old books but then you discover a new favorite, it’s a major event. It’s like finding liquid water on Mars: wonder and joy and promise where before you’d seen a barren landscape. The big discovery for me this year has been Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), entirely thanks to the beautiful…
Amazon Books, Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar bookstore, opened last week in Seattle’s University Village. The store is similar in appearance to many book retailers, though Amazon Books interestingly (and necessarily) does not note hard prices on its items in-store–the store has a commitment to its Amazon prices, which frequently change. Because of this, those browsing the…
Let’s start with One Hundred Years of Solitude, to prove after last time that I do, in fact, love Gabriel García Márquez, and because where else would I start? By me, there is no better family novel than One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel is nominally the story of the town of Macondo, told…
As Virginia Woolf famously observed, the best writing often begins with a rhythmical “wave in the mind,” an inner tempo around which syntax and diction are arranged, a guiding beat of artistic intuition that, when struck upon, makes it nearly impossible to set down the wrong word. Other writers have similarly expressed the importance of…
Anyone who has owned a cat has at some point looked on it with envy as it slumbered peacefully through the day. How are they so comfortable in their own skin? So clear in purpose, while we humans struggle so mightily to know who we are and what we should do? “Raised by Humans” (New…
Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy Joanna Klink Penguin, 2015 Poetry | $20 80 pages, 6×9 in Buy: Paperback As a stopped clock is right twice a day, so book blurbs are right a few times a year. On the back cover of Joanna Klink’s fourth book, Terrance Hayes declares, “As soon as I finished this…
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