it’s a question I’ve heard used many times in fiction workshops to gauge the success of a narrative. As a writing instructor, I’ve posed a similar question to composition students by asking, “How would you summarize this?” Provided with two stylistically different pieces of short fiction—Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics,” and “Sleeping Bear Lament” by David [...]
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The Truth About Poor Poets
April 8, 2012 – 1:15 am
when people ask me what I do, I don’t hesitate to tell them that I am a performer. They automatically get excited. “Do you sing?” they ask. I ignore the obvious sexism associated with the question and reply, “Sometimes. I’m a poet. I perform Spoken Word.” After this statement is made, one of two things happens: either a) [...]
Inspirational Reading
March 24, 2012 – 10:05 pm
i am not a particularly religious person but I am comforted and inspired by certain rituals, particularly the observance of seasons and holidays. As a one-time New Orleanian, my favorite season is naturally the carnival season, a season of decadence and abandon that reaches a climax on Mardi Gras day. I also practice Lent—the season [...]
Agitating Characters
March 7, 2012 – 2:01 pm
let’s do away with “flat characters.” Let’s also do away with “round characters,” “believable characters,” and “unbelievable characters.” These terms have been driven into the ground and I don’t even know what they mean anymore. Round characters are supposed to be fully fleshed-out people we could recognize in the real world. But fidelity to the [...]
Epigraphs: New Beginnings
February 28, 2012 – 11:50 pm
a few days ago, I put Facebook to good use and asked friends, “What do you think about epigraphs?” An aspiring fellow writer responded: “What the hell is an epigraph, anyway? I don’t read epigraphs, I don’t use them, and I don’t think they add/detract from the writing. I don’t get them.” Another one said, [...]
A New Formula for Poetry Readings
February 19, 2012 – 11:43 pm
nights at the bar and any time spent with fellow students seem to involve some of literature’s great debates: Austen or Eliot? Stevens or Williams? Sedaris or Saunders? The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye? Sexton or Plath? Young Yeats or elder Yeats? We don’t always agree. We never will. In ten years [...]
A Nice, Tidy Category
February 11, 2012 – 5:44 pm
i’ve decided to start a movement against blurbs on book jackets. I’m reading a novel called Toward You by Jim Krusoe. I have nothing against this book. I like this book. I have nothing against Tin House Books, the publisher. They seem like cool people. They’re from Portland, so they must be. The jacket for [...]
“…I contain multitudes.”
January 29, 2012 – 10:59 pm
in creative writing workshops, a clichéd piece of advice for novice writers everywhere is to write what you know. Like most writers, my early experiences formed the basis of my early writing, and even later stories. I grew up in equal parts America and Pakistan; some of it here, some of it there. People call [...]
Stealing Fire
January 6, 2012 – 11:12 pm
sometimes, on the very first day of fall, the angle of late afternoon light starts to slant, almost imperceptibly. No more than a ghost shiver along the nape of the neck. A shimmer at the brink of wherever you find yourself looking. Almost as if a whisper of wind were rustling the leaves of the [...]
Among the Graves
November 29, 2011 – 4:13 am
when i first see Oscar Wilde’s gravestone, from a distance, it seems to be covered in blood. The letters of his name are not the ordinary, graveyard gray, but a deep red; and, walking along the tree-shaded path of the Pére Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France, I feel that this apparent bloodiness is somehow a breech [...]