Don't know what to make of the news that membership in organized religions is down in all fifty states. That's not quite true.  I've been trying not to let myself make anything of it.  For one thing, I'd just be talking out of my hat.  I don't know enough.  None of the articles I...

Part One is here. "What we do get in life and miss so often in literature is the sentence sounds  that underlie the words.  Words in themselves do not convey meaning, and to [prove] this, which may seem entirely unreasonable to any one who does not understand the psychology of sound, let u...

Way back when, my friend Jeff was a lunatic behind the wheel of a car. He'd roll up to a stop sign, ask me, "Anything big coming?" and before I could answer or even look for the semi that would kill us he'd shout, "BANZAI!" and floor it. He had a beat to shit old Toyota that was more rust than solid...

We're having an ugly winter here that just won't quit.  Not that I've got any business complaining, considering what folks are going through in Arkansas and Kentucky.  Besides I've lived through worse winters.  Twelve of them.  In a row. Back in Syracuse, where in the most meteor...

Jean Stafford was already gone from Robert Lowell's life when Elizabeth Bishop entered into it and he entered into hers.  So Stafford makes fleeting appearances in his letters to Bishop.  When I started grad school Lowell and Stafford were my ideal of a bohemian romantic couple.  I ha...

You probably know the type.  Character in the office, around the neighborhood, in your family who manages to involve everybody around them in their personal dramas? Usually it's the case that all they want is to talk about it.  They don't even want you to listen, just sit there and pretend...

Now and again, I've given into the temptation to write about my old girlfriends here. As if you're interested. I probably should keep my romantic past to myself.  As Bertie Wooster says, a gentleman does not bandy names.  But I'm sentimental and I'm nostalgic and, frankly...

Went to a play last night. It's not all sand, surf, and seafood for us down here.  Occasionally we go in for some culture.  Play was Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, the play Hello Dolly! is based on and it was put on by the Ohio University Players, a summer rep company in residence here,...

This fragment comes from a piece I originally began prior to the 2004 Presidential election. It kept changing over time, until it was a 20,000 word monster in need of an organizing principle. Perhaps I'll publish it one day. In the interim, here's an autobiographical segment I wrote to provide backg...

This is one of the passages I excised from the final draft of the paper I submitted for my Comparative Literature course on Postmodernism, which was a longer, more academic version of the piece "Making Sense of Seattle" that I wrote for Bad Subjects: Political Education For Everyday Life earlier tha...