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Ambiguity: The Boundary Between Psychosis and Reality in Science Fiction

Ambiguity: The Boundary Between Psychosis and Reality in Science Fiction

Television culture means that we often lack the depth to deal with ambiguity. The complexity of novels eludes our attention; we often prefer the truncated and clear narratives of sitcoms, where a plot line is fully resolved in forty-three minutes. The beauty of ambiguity, and of the blurred line between reality and divergent reality, is…

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #6: Stop, Look, and Listen

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #6: Stop, Look, and Listen

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part!  If you’ve been following along with this series from the start, you might have noticed a bit of a theme emerging—each of the posts has, in its…

The World’s Strongest Librarian

The World’s Strongest Librarian

The World’s Strongest Librarian Josh Hanagarne Gotham Books, May 2013 304 pages $26.00 Josh Hanagarne’s first book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, has so many different hooks it’s enough to make a publisher weep with joy. A 6’7”, weightlifting librarian? Sold. A librarian who suffers from Tourette’s? Sold. A part-Navajo, all-Mormon, Stephen-King-fanboy librarian, who lifts weights…

Cookbooks, Compost Heaps, and Poetry Booby Traps: A Conversation with Poet and Pie-maker Kate Lebo

Cookbooks, Compost Heaps, and Poetry Booby Traps: A Conversation with Poet and Pie-maker Kate Lebo

The first poetry anthology I owned was How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers. The title still gives me the giggles, though my amusement is perhaps more nuanced—as a kid, I delighted in the simple silliness of the concept; now, the idea of “eating” a poem seems…

The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, Part 5: Cowboy Poetry

I’ve heard this phrase uttered by a number of people—students, coworkers, friends, academics, random drunk party guests—anytime I mention one of the following: wearing comfortable stilettos, being a vegan Texan, or enjoying cowboy poetry. The juxtaposition of those pairings proves too much for people to process, but cowboy poetry is especially baffling. Perhaps it is…