How I envied the girls who could crack their gum and blow big pink bubbles. Friends tried to coach me, but I never got the stuff to stretch around my tongue, and thus had no handy weapon against stern nuns or ridiculous parental decrees. Was it an accident that bubblegum was Barbie […]
“Doomed to a life of unending toil, Heather Simmons fears for her innocence—until a shocking, desperate act forces her to flee… and to seek refuge in the arms of a virile and dangerous stranger.” Yep, that was my model for romantic love. The Flame and the Flower, by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. “A […]
For a time, during the early part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, social media was inundated with videos of captured Russian soldiers being given tea by everyday Ukrainians and a chance to call their parents back home. The propagation of this compassion might have seemed at odds with the viral video of […]
How benighted, that we once diagnosed schizophrenia as satanic possession. Or, later, that we blamed “frigidity” for the absence of an orgasm and “cold mothers” for their children’s mental illnesses. Well, we still blame greed and sloth for endocrine obesity; irresponsibility for addiction that has altered the brain’s receptors; perversion for behaviors […]
“You hear the word ‘dystopia’ a lot more these days,” remarks a friend, his intonation Eeyore’s. Well, yeah. News outlets now go to great lengths to give us “A Break from the News.” I can no longer even remember what it felt like, back in 2008, when Barack Obama said, “Yes, we […]
A friend and I used to argue for fun, and when we had exhausted the rational points of debate and I made a final, flourishy demand for proof, he would shrug and say, “Because I’m right.” It was maddening. Yes, he was teasing, but we both knew he also meant it—and so […]
Artists can be up to many things, but I have always been drawn to those who bear witness. “Poetry begins with listening,” says poet Sean Singer. In this role the artist is a sort of Quan Am—she who listens to the world’s cries—or like the angels in Wings of Desire, who watch and […]
Now that our picture is finished, I find that I have a great deal more respect for all motion pictures, even the bad ones, than I had before. However unsatisfactory they may be from the artistic viewpoint, immense pain and effort, many disappointments and much agony went into […]
All of a sudden, we are living in a simulation. Granted, Philip K. Dick said so in 1977, and Plato a little earlier. But ever since the first Matrix film, the simulation hypothesis has been gathering momentum. This month it sprang out at me like a Jack-in-the-box, mentioned again and again in […]
Creative writing programs in universities often host visiting writers and poets for public readings, student manuscript consultations, and class visits. As an undergraduate I organized the visit of Gwendolyn Brooks (and her husband, Henry Blakely, Jr., who demanded to know what poetry I, a mere proser, was working on). As a teacher I […]
