Author post Solstice 19 Dec 201719 Dec 2017 The latest in a series of poems in my new style, generally rummaging through existential despair and all that stuff.... forget the solstice it’s not a promise winter still waits,…
Author post Clause and Effect 11 Dec 201711 Dec 2017 Do you love subordinate clauses? I know I do. And how about assonance and alliteration, rhythm and rhyme? Let's face it: they can be as tasty as chocolate. But would…
Author post… Recursions, Part 9: “Finding a Form,” by William H. Gass 7 Dec 20177 Dec 2017 This is the ninth in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…
Author post Transcending Place 2 Dec 201714 Jan 2018 Place is important in stories: while plots are (or should be) based on actions, actions have to take place in a place--the very phrase "take place" tells us that. Be…
Author post Two Views of Thanksgiving Gluttony 23 Nov 201723 Nov 2017 I must precede this with a snark alert. Read at your own risk! Yes, it's the time of year when folks complain about falling into tryptophan comas, or of having…
Author post Our Own Day Here 16 Nov 201718 Nov 2017 Author's note: The ideas I explored in this essay--long ago, at a time before the phrase "identity politics" became current--those ideas are still under vigorous dispute, on both right and…
Announcement On Paper, In Stores 10 Nov 2017 Issue #3 of Scotch Rutherford's Switchblade, an Anthology of Noir, is out now, a fact which particularly interests me as it contains the first short story I have published in…
Author post The Value of Forgetting 5 Nov 20175 Nov 2017 A good memory is both blessing and curse to a novelist. As with all two-edged weapons, you have to wield it with caution, lest you damage your own self...or in…
Announcement Poetry in Motion 1 Nov 20171 Nov 2017 I seem to be on a roll, as they say of both sandwiches and anyone engaged in something more or less demanding: the little poems I've been writing whilst in…
Author post… Recursions, Part 8: “A Moveable Feast,” by Ernest Hemingway 26 Oct 201727 Oct 2017 This is the eighth in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…