Tag Archives: essays

from “In Love With Trains” (Tony Judt)

“According to the literary theorist René Girard, we come to yearn for and eventually love those who are loved by others. I cannot confirm this from personal experience—I have a history of frustrated longings for objects and women who were … Continue reading

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Blogs, Forms, and Abecedariums

As a quick glance over this blog (or Ruminate) will make clear, I’ve yet to figure out the forms that are my own best fit for blog writing. I feel intuitively that there’s an undiscovered, Platonic form out there in … Continue reading

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Thoreau on Virtue & Vice

[CC licensed image by DerrickT] “I was never so rapid in my virtue but that my vice kept up with me. We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.” –Henry David … Continue reading

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…a monolithic shark (Leonard Michaels)

[photo by Pacific Yooper] “It [his erection] was a monolithic shark with blood in its nose and no appetite for analysis.” –Leonard Michaels

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from “The Unfuzzy Lamb” (Anne Fadiman)

For thirty-three years, Lamb sat on a high stool, identical to those occupied by thirty other clerks; dipped his goose quill into two inkwells, one containing black ink and the other red (he called the latter Clerk’s Blood); and recorded … Continue reading

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David Foster Wallace on John McCain

[photo by Steve Rhodes] David Foster Wallace’s essay on John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign is being re-issued as a book called McCain’s Promise. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, DFW responded to the question of whether he had … Continue reading

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from The Country of Language (Scott Russell Sanders)

from "Looking" We treat with care what we love, and we love only what we have truly learned to see, with all our senses alert. from "Hunger for Books" Like sunshine, like the urgency of spring, like bread, language is … Continue reading

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Charles Simic: Poet Laureate

As anyone likely to read my ramblings already knows, Charles Simic is the new Poet Laureate. I’m glad I dropped most of my poetry blog reading list and picked up only a select few I could remember because I can … Continue reading

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Monkey Sighting: Harold Taw

Via First Draft a snippet from Mark Taw’s This I Believe entry: I could say that I believe in America because it rewarded my family’s hard work to overcome poverty. I could say that I believe in holding on to … Continue reading

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