
A Celebration of the Sonnet – Katie Wilson
Sunday, April 22, 2012 13:41
In my experience, this difficulty, and the alternately playful and agonizing mental contortions that result, perform a specific and crucial function. They guard against a certain poetic self-indulgence that I, at least, am prone to when working with looser forms.

The Way Thought Moves
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 15:59
The Way Thought Moves I recently had a conversation with the poet Caleb Thompson about the difficulty of “following a thought,” of moving logically from a preposition to a conclusion. He had been reading quite a few essays and was perhaps feeling awed by the talent these writers possessed of cutting through the static of daily “thought.” I replied that good essays are not an accurate record of a mind in motion—the literary equivalent of Muybridge’s photographs might be the Surrealists’ practice of automatic writing—the mind works through tangents, association, gaps, false memory, distraction. An essay that is [...]

Pop Music Died with Kurt Cobain (but there aren’t enough shovels)
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 1:02
Radiohead’s OK Computer, Beck’s Mellow Gold, The Strokes’ Is This It all marked their place in rock history, but none could be argued (sensibly) to have come anywhere near the epochal event that was Nevermind. Nevermind distilled and beatified the disillusionment, angst, anger and sorrow of a generation that otherwise had nothing much for consolation. It was art, and it still is.

Slim-Fast Vacation
Thursday, February 2, 2012 16:47
Two years had gone by since my last relationship ended, since I last kissed anyone. Not for lack of trying. I went on dates with women, most of whom I met on the Internet–one who told me her ex-girlfriend had accused her of strangulation, but in her defense, said, “There weren’t even any marks on her neck!” When I asked how she trained her four well-behaved Jack Russell dogs, she said, “I beat the shit out of them!” Another who, when I told her I was Jewish, said, “I once met a woman from Germany.” And another who was a [...]

