Ugliness in Natalie Shapero’s Hard Child
Whatever the case, it’s certainly true that for most of my reading life, it never occurred to me that poetry could be anything other than beautiful.
John Keats
Writ in Water: The Wet Years
I live near a cemetery in the Berkeley hills that has turned green from the rain. I do most of my jogging in the cemetery, and it reminds me—especially going uphill—that our time here is fleeting. I run among the dead, and I run among the deer and turkeys and other animals forced down the…
The Anti-Ekphrastic: Art Inspired By Text
Writers often respond to visual art, a form known as Ekphrastic prose or poetry, and most famously as John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” But what happens when the form is inverted? The anti-ekphrastic takes many forms: The Futurists were the first to create sound poetry, or the art of connecting literary and musical…
Telling the Stories of the Dead: Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery
My own ancestors are interred in austere Midwestern cemeteries with small flat stones or rounded markers decorated with the occasional “Beloved Mother” or laser-etched photo. But Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, I discover on a field trip with Spalding MFA students to write about art and place, makes much more elaborate use of art, narrative,…
Literary Blueprints: The Temptress
If the Byronic Hero is the bad boy of literature, then the Temptress is his female counterpart. The Literary Blueprints series looks at dangerous ladies and their wanton ways. “She looked slick as hell; polished, neat, and with that feminine deadliness that can drive you nuts. They work on it till they get complete control…