Cory Aaland on Julio Cortázar's HOW TO CLIMB A STAIRCASE
Julio Cortázar’s “INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO CLIMB A STAIRCASE” operates like this: it closely reads into the act of climbing a staircase, magnifying the moment with meticulous description, and in doing so...
View ArticleMelanie Madden on Craig Childs’ “Raven” and Barry Lopez’ “The Raven”
Some texts are more prescriptive than others. Two weeks ago I showed a class of freshmen a Mark Bittman TED talk on the threat that industrialized meat production poses, and today three of those...
View ArticleAftertude, or The Five Stages of Loss: Simmons B. Buntin Remembering Jake...
Jake Adam York: August 10, 1972 - December 16, 20121. IsolationBecause there is blood streaming from his side, a man is screaming. This is not a metaphor. Because the wound has split the taught muscle...
View ArticleMaya L. Kapoor on Writing Trout
Lately, I have appreciated David Quammen’s trout thoughts. Quammen, whose career took off with the popularity of his Natural Act column in Outside Magazine, moved to Montana for the trout. He has a lot...
View ArticleCynthia Brandon Slocum on Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Someone I Love”
When someone asks if I have an example of a short narrative, I say yes. When a friend calls to see if I can suggest a lyric essay for his class, I say yes.When a colleague wanders into my office,...
View ArticleKati Standefer on David James Duncan and the Art of Seeing
I used to read “Birdwatching as a Blood Sport” in the sauna at the North Boulder Rec Center, on winter days when my feet wouldn’t warm. In that dim light—the wooden benches gleaming with years of oil,...
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"Two Clowns on Tarkovsky": Mark Ehling
(or here's a downloadable pdf if you'd rather) *Mark Ehling assembles words and pictures. He also participates in the internet: newcarriage.tumblr.com. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his...
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Let the Blurring Begin!
Print 26.67 Kindle: 16.50One day I woke troubled by the hard fact about facts; that is, that their factuality is often in flux. Sure, the world is round today, I reasoned, but hadn’t...
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Dave Mondy on Jim Bouton
"Pitchers and catchers report,"I read last week -- so I readied the relic and began the ritual.Yes, every year at the start of Spring Training, I read Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and no -- as I hear the...
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Parke Cooper on Horses, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Displacement of Fear
Hunter Thompson's The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depravedis a favorite of mine because it breaks the perceived promise that we readers think that it makes to us: It is a piece of writing about the...
View ArticleMegan Kimble on Wendell Berry and Why I'm Not Going to Buy A Smartphone
Hey Wendell—Can You Hear Me Now? Late last year, when my 2008 Nokia “Twist” finally up and twisted itself into two parts, when a Verizon Wireless salesperson bantered with me in a textbook sort of...
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Sarah Minor on the Centaur, Taxidermy, Fairytaling, and the Essay
Once upon a time…… out beyond Gates Pass, between the saguaros and cracked washes of a desert city’s dusty skirts, stood a castle where a centaur slept for eternity, encased in glass. That time is now,...
View ArticleMelissa Gutierrez on How To Discover A Universe That Sticks Around Forever
Brace yourself.And get comfy, ‘cause this thing is long.Not this thing. Or that thing (get your mind out of the gutter!). This thing. This old Philip K. Dick speech-turned-essay (“speesay,” if you...
View ArticleJulien Colella on Trilobites and Richard Fortey via a Diptych
In Minneapolis, there exists a completely soundless room. The anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs is so quiet that solitary folks can hear the sloshes and groans of their functioning organs. Sleep would...
View ArticleKati Standefer on the Mysterious Leslie Ryan and the Structure of a Trauma...
You have not heard of Leslie Ryan. Because you have not heard of her, I would like to hand you a book of her razor-sharp prose: maybe a prickly memoir, maybe a collection of essays reeking of creosote...
View ArticleThe Masked Men: On David Shoemaker's Dead Wrestler of the Week
A confession: I love professional wrestling. As with most people, I became entranced by it at a young age: I would go over to a friend’s after school & we would smash plastic figurines...
View ArticleJoni Tevis on the long lyric essay
A Paperback Cabinet of Wonder: Unlocking the Long Lyric EssayI’m thinking today about the challenges of the long lyric essay, which I’m defining as anything from about forty pages to book-length. For...
View ArticleDead Possums and Unicorns: a Q&A with T Clutch Fleischmann
I first encountered a proof of T Clutch Fleischmann's book-length essay, Syzygy, Beauty, about a year ago. Right from the beginning I sensed a certain magnetism emanating from the text-- the book...
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