One of the most central issues in writing anything is voice, at least for me. When beginning a piece, I always ask myself, who do I want to do the talking in this poem or story? Is it a man or a woman? How old? What are his or her major concerns? Quick to anger […]
That health directives such as wearing masks and getting vaccinated have become battlefields in a cultural war against science has made for a continuing stream of headlines and analysis in the news media. Fighting (a term I use figuratively to connote political activism of all sorts, but not actual combat) the anti-science idiots is something […]
Read More… from PANDEMIC CULTURAL WARS DISTRACT US FROM OUR MANY WARS & OUR ENORMOUS MILITARY BUDGET
We’re approaching the twentieth anniversary of the death of my younger brother Leslie, the result of brain injuries sustained from falling off a roof and landing on concrete. In contemplating his life and death, my mind always wonders what has happened to the people into whom his skin, bones, and kidneys were transplanted. That always […]
Read More… from REFLECTIONS ON THE GREAT WATER CYCLE AND THE DEATH OF A BROTHER ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO
Save the Day – June 6th, 7 PM EST – Zoom Book Launch Party for “The Brothers Silver” by Marc Jampole Save the Date: June 6th Zoom Book Launch Party for “The Brothers Silver” A new novel by Marc Jampole published by Owl Canyon Press Date: SUNDAY, JUNE 6TH Time: 7:00 PM EST […]
Save the Day – June 6th, 7 PM EST – Zoom Book Launch Party for “The Brothers Silver” by Marc Jampole Save the Date: June 6th Zoom Book Launch Party for “The Brothers Silver” A new novel by Marc Jampole published by Owl Canyon Press Date: SUNDAY, JUNE 6TH Time: 7:00 PM EST (6:00 […]
Did you ever spend the evening drifting in and out of sleep while watching television? Your consciousness toggles effortlessly between the TV show, a drowsy state in which you hear the TV as a background muttering, your dreamworld, and dreamless sleep. Sometimes when you wake up, you could swear that the TV is on a […]
The cruelness of last April would have delighted the T.S. Eliot of “The Waste Land.” We were in the middle of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We knew very little about the disease except that it was spreading rapidly and was more than 10 times as deadly as the annual flu. Everyone we […]
Read More… from LAST YEAR, APRIL WAS THE CRUELEST MONTH, BUT THIS APRIL IS FULL OF PROMISE
Baseball season has started, a long grind of 162 games, just to reach the playoffs, one day very much like the day before and the one after for the ballplayers who spend most every day the same way: going from hotel to practice to game to hotel again. Kind of boring. Kind of like self-isolating […]
All societies sort themselves into winners and losers, but the fruits of winning differ, depending on the society. Compared to historical trends, the United States is giving more to the winners and less to everyone else than at any time since at least the Gilded Age of the second half of the 19th century. Supporting […]
Capturing emotions in words sometimes reminds me of trying to catch a beam of light in the hand. I’ve tried lots of common rhetorical tricks with varying degrees of success: describing the physical characteristics of the emotion; using a description of nature to evoke the emotion; telling a story that hopefully leads the reader to […]