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October 13, 2015
Getting Press: the Questions to Ask About Publicity Before Your Book Is Published
“My last book did not get a single review,” a friend told me last year after the release of his third title. “The publisher didn’t do anything to promote it, and I didn’t have time.”This is, ...
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April 13, 2015
Thinking with M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!
I thought today I’d write about a text that beautifully, painfully, brilliantly performs some of the affective and political work that I’ve been writing about in past posts: M. NourbeSe Philip’s ...
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April 15, 2015
Spring in Elsinore
In the beginning of Spring I often think of the very beginning of Hamlet:ACT ISCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDOBERNARDOWho's there?FRANCISCONay, ...
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April 26, 2014
The Most Important Skill
Someone asks me what’s the most important skill a poet can have and I start to say the power of observation. The world awaits us with all sorts of small truths that can’t easily be seen. When I lose ...
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April 23, 2014
More Revision
A friend confesses that he could spend the rest of his life revising a handful of the same poems. One change leads to another. It’s like a glassblower unsure whether to make a swan or a squirrel, the ...
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April 21, 2014
Devoured
Some days I want to tear chunks off the alphabet, chop up syllables, sink my teeth into the gristle of grammar. I discovered a ferruginous hawk up a tree in my backyard the other day with the peeled pink ...
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October 31, 2015
The Thing That Terrifies Me the Most About Writing
It came out of me the in a journal entry the other day, a fear I know has been swimming around inside for years now, but one that I never fully articulated, or maybe even fully acknowledged, until it ...
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October 28, 2015
How Spending Time with Your Influences Helps Overcome Creative Blocks
It happens to everyone: Everything is humming along nicely with a project and then, bam! You have no idea where to go next. The words aren’t coming anymore, the ideas have stalled, and your confidence ...
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September 28, 2014On Janus
Sonnet IVNew yeare forth looking out of Janus gate,Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:And bidding th’old Adieu, his passed dateBids all old thoughts to die in dumpish sprightAnd calling forth ...
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September 26, 2014On Pseudonyms: Q&A with Amanda Earl
On pseudonyms a.k.a. aliases a.k.a. handles a.k.a. avatars a.k.a. monikers a.k.a. sobriquets ak.a. epithets a.k.a. pen names a.k.a. nicknames a.k.a. noms de guerres a.k.a. anon.:Q&A with Amanda Earl, ...
