A Transcendent Wilderness: Andrew J. Graff’s Raft of Stars
In particular, Graff’s river is numinous. It’s the center of everything.
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Posts Tagged: Nick Ripatrazone
Private Belief vs. Public Art
For The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone explores Eyewear Publishing’s new anthology, The Poet’s Quest for God, and explains why poets “need God”: How do we discern a writer’s religious beliefs? When does the private belief inform the public art? When it comes to political views of writers, we prod and we conjecture with pleasure. When it comes to […]
...moreA Eulogy for the Eulogy
Twentieth century philosopher J.L. Austin asked in his writing what words and phrases could do in their utterance. In this tradition, Nick Ripatrazone examines Morgan Meis and Stefanie Anne Goldberg’s fictionalized eulogy collection, Dead People, to find out what the memorializing of public figures like Kurt Cobain and Christopher Hitchens actually do in their tellings, […]
...moreWriters Who Burn Their Own Work
We burn old love letters and photographs to be reborn. The action of burning is often a process. Find a match or a lighter. Put the papers in a container or can or shove them in a fireplace. There are so many moments along the way when we can have second thoughts, when we can […]
...moreLearning by Listening
The Millions staff writer Nick Ripatrazone examines literature that “embraces the power of radio” and highlights the sounds of language: Radio is elegiac. Radio is the theater of the mind: our eyes are free to look elsewhere, but the sound bounces in our brains. Two mediums that elicit imagination and subjective experience, radios and literature go well […]
...moreGrowing Up with Books
Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone asked some authors, including William Giraldi and Christa Parravani, which were the books that defined their childhoods and, subsequently, their writing imaginations.
...moreWriters and Running
Nick Ripatrazone on why writers need to run: While on sabbatical in London in 1972, a homesick Oates began running “compulsively; not as a respite for the intensity of writing but as a function of writing.” At the same time, she began keeping a journal that ultimately exceeded 4,000 single-spaced, typewritten pages. “Running seems to […]
...moreSummer Swimmer’s Lament
Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone dives into John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” a story with well-deserved fame in the literary community, exemplary of Cheever’s style and a perfect read with which to mourn summer’s end.
...moreWord of the Day: Vergence
(n.); simultaneous movement of eyes toward or away from one another; c. 1902 in ophthalmology “Some days I can move the mower slowly, along lazy paths. … On other days, when rain beckons and the grass looks nearly knee-high, I need to scorch green earth. More often, I simply head out to the lawn with […]
...moreIntroducing Introductions
“No matter whether it is called an introduction, foreword, or preface, the best front piece written by the book’s own author encourages a reader to turn the page and start, but respects her need to experience the work on her own.” Over at the Millions, Nick Ripatrazone explores the use and usefulness of prefaces, forewords, […]
...moreDo We Need a Poet Laureate?
For Literary Hub, Nick Ripatrazone breaks down—and defends—the poet laureate.
...morePlaces Where Art is Made
We often look to metaphor for guidance in our constant search for the how and why of writing. In an essay at The Millions comparing writing to running, Nick Ripatrazone explains that training is not just an analogy for his creative process but an essential part of it: Training sharpens ideas by cutting away the chaff […]
...moreTeaching Pynchon
At its worst, Pynchon’s prose is a beautiful failure. At its best, Pynchon’s prose is revelatory. Nick Ripatrazone, writing for The Millions, talks about what makes it so hard to teach The Crying of Lot 49.
...moreLiterary Duets
At The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone reviews BOMB Magazine’s “The Author Interviews,” “a collection of 35 interviews spanning 30 years.” He meditates on the competing definitions and modes, concluding he is “drawn” to interviews not “for their performative components” but for how they act “as literary duets.”
...moreRotating Writing 90 Degrees
At my desk next morning I held my pen and hunched my shoulders and leaned my head down, physically trying to look more deeply into the page of the notebook. I did this for only a moment before writing, as a batter takes practice swings while he waits in the on-deck circle. In that moment […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
On Tuesday, Aqueous Books released From Here, Jen Michalski’s second short story collection and fourth book. The founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww and a long-time Baltimore resident, Michalski’s fiction has found homes in more than 80 publications. Looking at the early reviews and the stories from the new collection that have appeared online, […]
...moreThe Devil Finds Work
Combining The Exorcist, New Jersey, and James Baldwin, among other things, Nick Ripatrazone reviews William Giraldi’s new novel, Hold the Dark, at The Millions. He contemplates Giraldi’s place in contemporary Catholic literature, using his fiction, alongside Cormac McCarthy’s and Christopher Beha’s, to draw larger claims on religion, the manifestations of Satan, and realism.
...moreRising to Literature’s Bait
From Ernest Hemingway to Richard Brautigan and Jim Harrison, fishing and literature has always had a strong, mysterious link. Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone goes deep into this ancient relationship.
...moreCreative Writing’s Business
Rumpus contributor Nick Ripatrazone writes about teaching students the business side of creative writing at The Millions, addressing some crucial questions: Should a writer submit to a literary magazine that only “pays” in contributor copies? What does it mean that we, in the literary community, have accepted lack of monetary payment as commonplace? Does literary […]
...moreThe Saddest Poem Ever Written
A lot of poems are sad, but over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone thinks he’s found the saddest: “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ripatrazone explores Hopkins’s poem, and while doing so, gives his thoughts on what good poetry can do: I think the best poetry is a form of interrogation of self. I […]
...moreFlannery O’Connor Can’t Be Tamed
This quote from Paul Lisicky in an essay at The Millions neatly sums up why it can be so difficult to teach Flannery O’Connor’s work: …it’s so easy to simplify O’Connor. Even sophisticated readers are prone to missing out on all the nuances in the work. First timers tend to read the stories as satire. […]
...moreSearching for Rafters in the Dark
If sentimentality is a sin, it is only because feeling can be so beautiful. One moment of sentiment in literature is worth a thousand failures. We often cannot see the rafters in the dark, but what a shame it would be to never reach for them. In an essay published at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone describes the fear he once had […]
...moreThe Music Behind the Poems
Poetry and music share a word of process — composition — and are linked by negotiations of melody, harmony, rhythm, proportion, and discord. While some poets require silence to compose, many others find that listening to music and writing go hand-in-hand. Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone asks poets what music inspires them to write, […]
...moreAll Roads Lead to Writing
Over at The Millions, Rumpus contributor Nick Ripatrazone looks at the many and varied paths that bring writers to the profession and considers the benefits of time spent studying subjects other than creative writing: Although I have drifted toward the science of syntax, I think about the positives of studying content that is not literary. My […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Ming Holden
Writer and development worker Ming Holden discusses her book The Survival Girls, a nonfiction novella that looks at the lives of a group of refugee women from Nairobi who use art and personal performance to combat systematic abuse.
...moreLit-Mags in Pop Culture
“Does anybody outside of our circle care?” asks The Millions’ Nick Ripatrazone in a post about literary magazines. “What is the wider cultural influence of literary magazines?” To try to figure it out, he looks at pop-culture depictions of lit-mags, from a George Plimpton cameo on The Simpsons to a whole episode of Cheers about submitting—and then […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Mark Jay Brewin, Jr.
Mark Jay Brewin, Jr. waxes about Catholicism, the roles of fathers and sons, and what it means to be a poet from New Jersey.
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This is Not About Birds by Nick Ripatrazone
Kristina Marie Darling reviews Nick Ripatrazone’s This is Not About Birds today in Rumpus Poetry.
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