On screen the audience sees an empty gravel lot behind the metal wall of a municipal sports arena. Where the crushed stone stops a line of arbor vitae protects the no-man’s-land strip of grass and the handful of buildings farther…
Arabesques by David Massey
I have read critics who referred to Henry James’s syntax as involute and to William Faulkner’s as convolute. I do not know that there is any real distinction to be made between the two descriptions; both styles are arabesque; and…
Sappho’s Literary Visuals of the Archaic Period by Mercury-Marvin Sunderland
According to Hurwit’s features of the Archaic style, there are several common themes of this time period — “reliance on schemata,” “impulse for pattern,” “domination of surface and plane,” linearity, ornamentality, and “explicitness and impassivity.” While these are obviously traits…
A Conversation with Heather Lang Cassera by Risa Pappas
Heather Lang Cassera holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry with a Certificate in Literary Translation. In 2017 she was named Las Vegas’ Best Local Writer or Poet by the readers of KNPR’s Desert Companion. Her poems have been published…
Guest Post: The Creative One by CL Bledsoe
I always wanted to be a writer, but I was afraid I never could be because I didn’t think I was creative enough. In the fifth grade, my public school moved me into Honors classes based on standardized test scores….
Guest Post: On Drinking and Driving, and On Writing by nv baker
(Dedicated to Idiots, Assholes, Delvers, and Thinkers) Topographies are important. The feel of the land. A lover’s feel, inspirited and hearthsick; caressing hands roughly over protrusions and pressing fingers into the furrows of the terra—that’s how you write, that’s the…
A Conversation with Sharanya Manivannan
An interview by Alicia Cole. The poet Sharanya Manivannan’s first book of fiction, The High Priestess Never Marries, has been described in The Establishment as “a tour de force of language, desire, and ancestral heartbeats.” It has just been published…
Guest Post: You Are Stronger Than You Think You Are by J. B. Howard
As a child, I had terrible asthma. I spent hours every evening breathing fumes out of a noisy machine called a “nebulizer,” and most days I required puffs from my collection of inhalers—the blue one made me shaky, but the…
Guest Post: The Importance of Hickory-Nut Hunting by W. Royce Adams
Although I’m looking back decades into the ‘50s, I still remember my first college freshman English class assignment. I had been placed in what was then called “dumbbell English,” or Subject A, a course designed for those who didn’t qualify…
Guest Post: The Domestication of the Poet by Lauren Sartor
The current trend of writing poetry has made it so that more and more poets can sustain a living in the periphery of creative writing. The advent of MFA programs, the uptick of blogs and magazines and the general increased…
Guest Post: Becoming a Real Writer: the Creative Writing Major by Colleen Fullin
I recently received an email from a young woman asking for advice. She is a junior at the fine arts high school I attended more than ten years ago. She contacted me at the email address affiliated with my school,…
Guest Post: Equine Inspiration by Alex Mullarky
Equine Inspiration When I was growing up I was aware of two distinct sides of my personality developing at the same time. On one side, there was an avid reader and aspiring writer who dreamed of bestselling novels and signing…