Nothing New Under the Sun: The Russian Formalists’ Guide to Prose Craft
With a fixation on abstract novelty, our students call to us from a crowded space of so many like tales and so much pressure to spit out some shiny new thing.
Essays
168 posts
An Imprecise Translation
There are feelings, memories, behind everything you say. If only it were as simple as putting your hand to your temple.
Wilder’s Mozzy
We feel a pull toward the missing person, want to find them, give a little bark or nip at their heels, then direct them home.
Parallel Practice: Haunting in Theory/Haunting in Practice
Salt is used for food, not purification. Candles should be burned for ambiance, not to manipulate energies.
Still Working on It
You shouldn’t beat them with your hand, because they will hate you and bite it, so you use mass media instead.
Carry Me With You
The world needs you in it, and you will come to savor every minute of your life.
Sugar Factory
Though I can’t prove Haines wrote “On the Sly” about or even in Toronto—though the timing seems to line up with her and Shaw meeting here in the late 90s—somehow everything about this city seems packed into that line about the sugar factory.
Letter to My Dad
I wonder if the adoption agency thought they were clever, or if they thought both adoptive parents and adoptee having brown hair was enough to signal we belonged to each other.
Empty Houses Ring
emerging into one junk-filled yard where every space is laden with boards and tires and tubes and appliances and a van undriveable loaded like a mind in tatters . . .
To My Third Father
I didn’t understand consent, the formal severance of me and my biological father. Like magic, my past dissipated.