death
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“Imperfect Eulogy”
At ZYZZYVA, Shanthi Sekaran writes about her friend, Elmer Morrissey, one of four sailors who went missing in the boating accident off the Farralon Islands earlier this month. “I try to feel again the transitional seconds when Elmer went from…
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Habeas Whitney
The one that got me was a torso shot. There were a bunch of them published even before she died, frantic paparazzi pictures of Whitney Houston leaving last night’s party.
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A Memorandum of Ghosts
Outside my window in Chicago it is snowing. I am overlooking a back yard that looks like a New England forest. Pine trees and garden bridges, amber soil and dirty snow. Snow that only looks that way after a January…
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Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship
Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories.
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Tragic Literary Ends
Publisher’s Weekly is attempting to deconstruct that fateful link between writers and tragic deaths through the anecdotal ends of some of the literary greats. Tennessee Williams choked on a bottle cap, Sir Francis Bacon got a fatal case of pneumonia…
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Interviews Tracy K. Smith
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Tracy K. Smith about her collection Life on Mars/
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Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Darin Strauss
More than anyone else, though, Strauss holds himself up to intense examination and scrutiny, revealing very human, and in some cases unflattering, reactions and defenses over the years.
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Ari Messer: The Last Book I Loved, Ablutions
Why is the second person such a natural and addictive tense–perhaps the only honest one–when writing about drug abuse and a foggy recovery? For years, you haven’t been able to stop asking this question. Reading Patrick deWitt’s Ablutions: Notes for…
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Books For The Dark Night Of The Soul
In his late thirties, F. Scott Fitzgerald experienced a series of emotional and mental breakdowns, many of which he wrote about in a series of random essays and observations collected under the title, The Crack-Up. At the beginning of the…
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Hitchens On Dying
“At a luncheon earlier in the day with Hitchens and Berlinski, Taunton asked Hitchens about his health problems. ‘Well, I’m dying, since you asked,’ Hitchens replied. ‘So are you, but I’m doing it faster and in more rich and fecund…
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GENERATION GAP #4: Sexting in the 18th Century
About a year after the breakup, I started keeping a text message journal.
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Sometimes Still
In three different rooms on two coasts, artist Darren Almond is practicing visual alchemy. One thing he does is take long exposures on full moons in ridiculously remote locations. Another thing he does is capture time itself. The still above…