On J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
What Salinger gave to us were memorable meeting points between innocence and the world’s soiling stains. There was so much authenticity in his stance and sympathy that his artificialities… More
On Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
You could make a case for a kind of parallel between the events of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the fact of it being challenged in Alabama schools for… More
Censorship and Writing for Young Adults
I write for children and teenagers—this is my perspective on censorship from within the world of kids’ books. More
Excerpts from Dagmara Kraus’s gloomerang
guns in under-burn, time watched her slash sleek dreams / time leeched her guns · under dreams was knit: slash, burn. More
On translating Dagmara Kraus
Dagmara Kraus’s debut poetry collection, kummerang, is an exuberant investigation of a linguistically charged mind. The poems in kummerangrefuse to decide whether they will speak through sense or music,… More
Excerpts from Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile
She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She,… More
On translating Qiu Miaojin
What makes Kerouac or Salinger timeless is not necessarily literary, but perhaps didactic: the fact that there is wisdom to be found at the fountain of youth, no matter… More
A Few Ideas from My Black Box
A Few Ideas from My Black BoxOrange crush. No, blue field.Wait, green ember. Maybe red beam.In-any-case yellow. Possibly,Netherworld gray. Quivering purple?Skylark white. Taking out the trashbeneath a shuddering sadness… More
Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors
All the blondes / are thrown over his shoulders, the blondes he never even / liked, the bunches of blondes he mistook for bananas. More
My Banned Books
Before the decade ended, I was asked to return a payment of $50.00 to an educational publisher. My poem about dinosaurs had to be removed from a language arts… More