The Alchemy of Poetry Plus Criticism
What is the goal of poetry? Is it to make music with language? To express feeling? To make an argument? It’s likely, for any given poet, to be at least one of these things—and possibly all.
Gertrude Stein
The Lost Generation’s Women: Writers, Muses, and Supporters
The generation straddled wars, genres, and identities, leaving behind the staid writing of Edwardians, or what Hemingway referred to as “broad lawns and narrow minds.” Gertrude Stein was their godmother, acting as both an artist and a supporter of the arts.
In HBO’s Westworld, Literature Is the Key to Personhood
HBO’s Westworld is rife with literary references that, like the androids populating the titular park, have started to take on a life of their own.
Blood Memory
“There is only one of you in all time; this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”—Martha Graham Dance was my first foray into art, and I studied it for sixteen years with the kind of blind passion you can only…