I have been blogging at this location for the last fifteen years, and it is with pleasure that I continue to do so — but perhaps with a much-changed mission. When authors I know first started blogging, it was a way of communicating with people. I look back at the posts from five-six years […]
What Has Blogging Become in the Age of a “Like Button? Read More »
"Those unharnessed runnersfrom glen to glen!Nobody tamesthat royal blood, each one aloofon its rightful summit,antlered, watchful.Imagine them, the stag of high Slieve Felim,the stag of the steep Fews,the
A Moment With Sweeney Astray and The Stags Read More »
My notes on re-reading Harold Scheub's work on oral narrative structures and performance. They have shaped the way I think of the fantastic in narrative and how it functions, and by extension, how those "electric moments" when the real and the fantastic are combined in narrative. Notes from Harold Scheub's Story: an evident
The Shaping of Story: Working Through Ideas Read More »
Amid all this heavy lifting of my research notes, I re-read my essay, "A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater" " written for Realms of Fantasy on the history of clowns, from antiquity to the Marx Brothers. It's funny, and I enjoyed re-reading it as it provides a comprehensive view of the different
Interlude in the Research: Call in the Clowns, Satyrs, Fools, and Nymphs. Read More »
I love these wildly imaginative graphite portraits of "People Inconvenienced by Objects and Thought" by Stefan Zsaitits. They look almost exactly how my head feels right now. itchy, scratchy, and aggravated by an eye infection. It has been something of a rough road for these last four months as we traveled from Longmont, Colorado, to
People Inconvienced by Objects and Thoughts Read More »
St. Augustine of Hippo, a figure often remembered by young Catholics for his plea to God during his wild youth, "Give me chastity and continence, but not quite yet," Has left us with a wealth of wisdom. One such quote, which a friend recently shared with me, resonates particularly powerfully in our modern
Love and Do What You Will… Read More »
(Photos by Peter Zelei/istockphoto and John Robert Shepard) This happened across my internet desk one morning, and I stopped everything to read it. The poet Donald Hall wrote a short story about a journey he took post-WWII with his very young bride, driving from Oxford to Greece by way of Yugoslavia. It is one of
Donald Hall: One Road Read More »
"Traveling is brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” –Cesare Pavese
The Novels of Mythic and Perilous Travel Across Borders Read More »
I have respect for authors who manage to write incredibly long, complicated sentences — but with such consummate skill and daring that I inhale deeply and then read it aloud, trying to see if I can make it to the end in all one exhale. These sentences enter the text to condense a moment into
Barry Unsworth and the Best Long Sentence Read More »
Moon, come down andcome alone. I have to tell you allabout Akechi’s wife. — Bashō My husband and I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary this coming June. I think of all that passion at the beginning, rocking back and forth between joy and fear that it might suddenly prove
Basho’s Reflection On Marriage: Akechi’s Wife Read More »
