LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: salamander

  • Urgent: curse for moonlight declamation

    Two blessings and a curse–guess which one is the most fun to read aloud? My poxy poem, “All-purpose Spell for Banishment,” written last New Year’s Eve, just appeared in the new issue of Salamander. Maybe if we all chant it naked by moonlight on the solstice, inserting the name of our least favorite president, the new year…

  • Intertidal zone

    I’m currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s flood of a novel, New York 2140, at the edges of the work day. Sea levels have risen fifty feet but stubborn New Yorkers are trying to redefine their big moldy apple as SuperVenice, navigating the street-canals via vaporettos and hydrofoils. When you read a long book slowly, it seeps into…

  • How and why

    I’m not the only writer who’s fascinated by the processes of inspiration, composition, and revision, but horrified by the processes of self-promotion. And  I do mean full-on gothic trauma complete with repressed guilt rising monstrously from a shallow grave and chasing me through the Cemetery of Dead Projects. Brave heroine that I try to be,…

  • Good news makes me anxious

    The bad news: I am no longer in France. I know you’re weeping for poor privileged me—try to keep that under control. The other bit of tough luck, about which you may feel genuinely sympathetic: my one-year stint as acting Department Head of English has officially begun. My last term, from 2007-2010, was deeply demoralizing,…