Electronic writing is defined as any writing that is "digital born," or writing that is meant to be read on a screen, or something other than paper. Electronic writing can also refer to any writing that seeks to address how technology has impacted our lives and our relationship to language, such as twitter poems,
I was reading Paris Press's reissue of Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill when I discovered something completely mundane and mystifying: Virginia Woolf had had her teeth pulled because it was believed that "an infection of the teeth could somehow poison the brain."
Robert Crumb's latest and greatest project, finished after four years of research and A highly secretive undertaking at the drafting board, boogies its way from the bookshelf to the bedside with so much soul-shaking get-down you'd think Albert Ammons was trying to put you to sleep with the blues to back your prayers. Fusing
The eminence of James Wood as a literary critic is rarely questioned; a few years ago the upstarts at N+1 (the McSweeney’s of the East), tried to do just that and ended up embroiled in a rhetorical chess match that they devoted whole issues to, whether that was resolved is anyone’s guess. In his
Tao Lin on KCRW’s Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt There’s no point not talking about Tao Lin anymore so I’m just going to jump into the Tao Lin media tornado and contribute yet another post about this ubiquitous writer who sometimes causes me to have cold sweats and panic attacks at night.* It’s unlikely you
“Close the doors, you uninitiated,” begins the ancient commentary (Derveni papyrus) on a poem ascribed to Orfeus. Discovered in 1962, it is said to be Europe’s oldest manuscript. The fragments, as we see, begin with a deterrent. But what reader would stop there? The transgression itself–the walking through the doors–creates the room, the sense
Mi Revalueshanery Fren, Linton Kwesi Johnson‘s latest collection of dub-tongued, impossible-to-read-without-reading-aloud poems, draws from his forty year career, which began in London when he organized a Black Panther poetry workshop. From his earliest to most recent poems, words, which require the oral participation of the reader, are themselves participant in a revolutionary program–of giving
In the last hundred or so pages of Infinite Jest, Don Gately, a big, lovable ex-drug-addict living at the Ennet Halfway House, finds himself in a really difficult position. He has just been shot in the shoulder. He is at the hospital, where doctors keep materializing all serpent-like asking if he wants any drugs
Many literary purists may dismiss the photographs, colored markings and letter facsimiles of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as mere gimmicks–flashy pyrotechnics meant to catch the attention of lazy readers. But for the attentive reader these visual artifacts are props in creating the semiotic drama of Foer’s intention. Throughout the
Navigation by celestial positioning has been as useful to seafarers as to poets. As a result of Peter Gizzi’s newest book of poems, The Outernationale, it is possible—perhaps necessary—to generalize further about the art of locating oneself by approximation of arcs of distance and nearness in relation to true places of heavenly bodies. For
