Monthly Archives: June 2014

“What is the difference between a self and a soul?”

Why read poetry?  If you read novels because you like to find out what happens, and if you read non-fiction because you like to learn something, why read poetry? I read it because I like to think about questions that no … Continue reading

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“The menu, like love, was full of delicate, gruesome things — cheeks, tongues, thymus glands.”

No writer can make me laugh harder but wince longer than Lorrie Moore. Here is a sample of her humor: “Mike’s friends, however, tended to be tense, intellectually earnest Protestants who drove new, metallic-hued cars and who within five minutes of … Continue reading

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“Montaigne proved himself a literary revolutionary from the start, writing like no one else. . .”

I’ve always been interested in how writers choose to structure their stories. I was particularly curious about the narrative architecture of this book because it’s a biography about someone who is famous for the revolutionary way he constructed his autobiography. … Continue reading

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“There was a sunlit absence.”

This is the first line of my current-favorite poem by the Irish poet who was said to be “permanently homesick.”  I wonder if somehow he enjoyed being homesick. (Absence isn’t dark, it’s “sunlit” and the title of the poem is “Sunlight.”) It describes his … Continue reading

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