December 2022
No money off a dead woman’s body (& other poems)
published in
« I like my tyrants like I like my heroes. That is, crushed by a giant chandelier. »
When the world makes rags of us
published in
He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.
Coagulated soy juice
published in
〖 A killed darling. 〗 Lucia Berlin belonged to a less sanctimonious age than ours.
Flags & bones
published in
On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
« When I was silent… » — Interview with Sulaiman Addonia
published in
Stop! I am doing what they all do: presenting writer Sulaiman Addonia as one-who-has-suffered, because he grew up as a refugee. It is a problem of genre. Suffering has become an interviewer’s crutch.
Of human children & language children
published in
The first word I ever wrote was stsikukha: « pisser ». This is how my nanny Frosya called me to my face. On poetry and pathos in a bastard tongue.
Two palindromes
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→ → Pursuing / you lead me to come to the future.← ← coming to the future, I lead you / demanding.
Kill your darlings
published in
Like plots in a garden cemetery, with lamentations, good-riddances or other epitaphs.
Gerard Croiset & the adventure of the psychic detective
published in
The clairvoyant Dutch grocer who charted the frontiers of parapsychology and lent a hand to the FBI. « Unbelievable but true! »
Skinned alive
published in
Imagine your therapist assigned you to write your autobiography, after which you decided you were cured, so your therapist published it as revenge. Zeno’s Conscience turns 99.
A sangre fría
published in
Fernanda Melchor’s prose hits you square in the face, but its lyricism works differently in Spanish. On Veracruzano modernism, lyrical slang, and worlds so new that style falls apart.
The Archipelago Conversations, an excerpt — Interview with Édouard Glissant
published in
An excerpt from The Archipelago Conversations with the late French Carribean philosopher and poet. « The archipelagos of the Mediterranean must encounter the archipelagos of Asia, and the archipelago of the Antilles. »