Do I forgive my abusive mother? No, but I don’t spend any significant time being angry at her either. A dozen years into conscious recovery, my focus in on noticing and extracting what my old psychoanalyst called my mother’s “introjects” and my trauma therapist called “false beliefs”. They feel like psychic shrapnel. They’re leftover bits
“Not So Sorry”: Christian Journalist Probes the Limits of Forgiveness Read More »
Hello August! Like a closeted Republican politician, I have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of airport men’s rooms this summer, having traveled to the Bay Area for a family vacation. The San Francisco airport was actually a highlight of the trip. I was impressed not only with the food selections but the thorough commitment to recycling,
August Links Roundup: Plastic World Read More »
Summertime, and the living is…not easy. Many book-lovers are heartbroken over new revelations that the recently deceased fiction writer Alice Munro, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, covered up her husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter. Andrea Robin Skinner’s July 7 essay in the Toronto Star describes how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began molesting her
July Links Roundup: Surviving Without Heroes Read More »
Progressives rightly finger-point at Christian universities’ doctrinal litmus tests that end teachers’ careers for any hint of solidarity with LGBTQ folks or nonbelievers. But it feels as though purity culture is having a moment in left-leaning academic and literary circles too. Just because “wokeness” and “cancel culture” have become anti-diversity buzzwords, it doesn’t mean that
Against Literary Heresy-Hunting Read More »
Happy Pride Month! Or, if you prefer one of the other so-called deadly sins, how about Rainbow Sloth Month? “Diversity leads to resilience, and it is the reason we, and every other living thing on the planet exist,” says Ames Reeder at the Sloth Conservation Foundation. At the ecology-minded literary journal Terrain, Ana Maria Spagna’s
June Links Roundup: Speaking for the Trees Read More »
Happy May, readers! I have been traveling a lot, writing a little, and gluing things together. Remember how, during the pandemic, those of us stuck at home went through a Little House on the Prairie phase of cooking and handicrafts to stay grounded in our bodies in our suddenly virtual social world? My Instant Pot
May Links Roundup: Have a Good Time with Bad Art Read More »
We had a fine view of the total solar eclipse on April 8 from the terrace of my best friend’s house in Buffalo. The clouds came and went, giving us hints of the drama behind them. Watching the sun’s disc shrink to a crescent through our eclipse glasses was awe-inspiring enough, but then when the
Happy cruelest poetry month, April, etc. Speculative fiction pioneer Samuel R. Delany, who is still going to gay sex parties at age 80, wants you to stop treating the terms “literary fiction” and “high art” as synonymous. One is a genre description, the other is a value judgment. He explains in this 2019 interview with
April Links Roundup: Contested Histories Read More »
So much good stuff from the online journals I’ve been reading lately, I had to make a separate links post! At Frontier Poetry, Chris Watkins queers George Herbert’s tradition of Christ-haunted sonnets in “Prayer (II)”. Prayer—even now, secular,every poem you write, a knees-bent childleaning on their mattress. The mouth molecular.The porno of your guilt. A Girls
March Bonus Links: Notable Poems and Short Fiction Around the Web Read More »
In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of…blowholes. “Humpback sex photographed for first time–and both whales were male,” The Guardian newspaper reported in February. Despite decades of research on humpback whales, sightings of the male’s penis have been rare. Copulation by the species had not been documented by people – until
March Links Roundup: Baby Got Humpback Read More »