Workshopping My Dog

Apparently, E.L. Doctorow once taught a course that only had one book on the syllabus. The class read the one book and decided from there what the next book should be. If it was Jane Eyre, somebody might then suggest The Wide Sargasso Sea, which was a prequel and written by another writer at a…

Anima José Kozer (translated by Peter Boyle) Shearsman Books, February 2011 268 pages $20.00 José Kozer, one of the foremost Cuban poets of his generation, was born in Havana in 1940 to Jewish immigrants from Poland, and moved to the U.S. in 1960; Peter Boyle, his translator, is an award-winning Australian poet and translator, who…

I can only admit this because I believe I’m not alone. I believe that every writer—maybe every creative person, maybe anyone whose life is ruled by ambition, by a calling beyond rationality—has an imaginary nemesis. The person isn’t imaginary, mind you. But the rivalry is. Here’s what I mean by nemesis: The guy in your…