What if one of your worst moments as a human being was sculpted into a 16-foot-tall bronze statue and displayed in front of a shopping mall? Or a Parisian art…
What Is Amazing by Heather Christle is another illustration of my frustration with the word “critic,” why I think “appreciator” is a closer approximation and why I’m still open to…
I first discovered Renga: A Chain of Poems (Brazillier, 1972) in a used bookstore in New York during my first year of graduate school. I was transfixed.
October marks the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Indian Arts (IAIA). It’s the only 4-year college in America that is completely dedicated to Native American studies. At The Poetry Foundation,…
Some men on their 50th birthday buy a convertible, grow a mustache, shag a yoga instructor and enter what society calls a midlife crisis. Nick Cave had the greatest midlife…
You’ve heard me talk about Other Voices Querétaro. Our website is now live! Workshops with Pam Houston, Josip Novakovich and Rob Roberge. My longtime partner in the Other Voices operations, Stacy…
Discussions about gender are often framed as either/or propositions. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or so we are told, as if this means we’re all so…
The Tornado Collects the Animals The tornado likes animals because they pay attention. The tornado sees the dogs howling up from rippling yards, the cows huddled mutely against one another,…
There is a canon of cinema that revolves around girls leaving girlhood, and finding themselves young and nubile, ready (so they think) to embrace their future as women. There’s the…
Ever heard that gobsmacking troubadourist Ezra Pound read his elaborate, funkified sestina, “Sestina: Altafore,” in a voice that is one part American-as-European, swilling-with-the-rolling-R’s accent and cantorian swoons and another part…