Tag: fantasy
Multiple worlds in poetry, fiction, and politics
Traveling to an alternate universe of thinking and writing has been helpful lately given an attempted coup, and racist police response, AND the apocalyptic daily death count and a catastrophically lame vaccine rollout. I don’t manage the leap into literary concentration every day, but… Continue Reading “Multiple worlds in poetry, fiction, and politics”
Fantasy, The Weird, & the Big Picture
I attended my first World Fantasy Con this weekend, which didn’t stop me from tracking election news and Covid-19 spikes, but gave me some wonderful hours of forgetting to doomscroll as I listened to writers talk about storytelling and publishing. I don’t mean that… Continue Reading “Fantasy, The Weird, & the Big Picture”
Instructions for creating England
My speculative poetry students have been asking brilliant questions during the past two weeks: what’s Tracy K. Smith’s attitude towards a posthuman future in Life on Mars? How does assigning a higher priority to the natural world change Marvin Bell’s sense of what death… Continue Reading “Instructions for creating England”
Poetry as speculative fiction; or, being naive
I don’t share in ritual contempt for literary criticism as an enterprise—how could I and still bear to live with myself?—but having spent too much of the summer engaged in a massive review of several critical fields, I feel annoyed about the whole endeavor.… Continue Reading “Poetry as speculative fiction; or, being naive”
Heterocosmic
My mother divested herself of all kinds of things last year—furniture, dishes, adulterous husband. On one of my visits she loaded me up with a bin of old papers and photos. I quickly divided them into four piles: one each for me, my sister,… Continue Reading “Heterocosmic”
