Mark Twain’s 19 Rules Governing Literary Art

From Twain’s brutally funny essay on Fenimore Cooper’s literary offenses in the Deerslayer series. I thought of this essay on Saturday at the Brandywine River Museum, standing in front of one of N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations for Deerslayer. Here’s the beginning of the essay; I’ll put the link to the whole piece at the bottom. It [...]

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Grammar in the real world

So, I got an email this week that was just incredibly hostile, a pointed personal attack written in a strange and strained, passive voice, 3rd person construction. In describing it to someone else, I jokingly referred to its construction as the “3rd person insultive” case. And I liked that—both because the humor relieved some of [...]

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New work workshop — in progress, slow slow progress

Hey all—this morning was my first new work workshop. We wrote to prompts, twenty minutes per topic, then hauled everything to our rooms. Tomorrow we are to appear with a somewhat finished project. I’m working on the first prompt, a 12 line poem, with four lines in meter of some kind, that combines a dream [...]

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how poems come

how poems come Elliott batTzedek For myself, a poem emerges by itself, like something developing in a dark place. Fanny Howe, “Bewilderment” someone has taken a photo, photos, has not wound the film forward all the way, or too far, imprinting overlapping, underlapping, multiple exposures, images piling up, separated, blank space blank space blank space [...]

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a greater variety of poetry than what gathers in the schools?

Annie Get Your Gun Fifth in a series of eight manifestos. by D.A. Powell The thing about sardines when you buy them in a can: they are fairly uniform in size and in flavor; their individual identities have disappeared into the general fishiness of the soybean oil; their little bones have melted; their flesh has [...]

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Lynda Barry on Why Writing and Typing are Different Things

from Lynda Barry’s What It Is. Go buy this book. from pages 107-109. Her book is a graphic collage, so the sentences on the page are scattered, not in direct narrative prose. Translating it into only the words typed out loses a lot, but will give you a feel of the power she’s describing and [...]

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Lynda Barry on Images and Thoughts

from What It Is, her graphic/illustrated guide to writing. And living. And memoir. And art theory. This is an amazing book. Go buy it. An image feels different than a thought. It feels somehow alive. If you say your first phone number out loud, you can feel something that is different than saying your phone [...]

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new work – On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, then

On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, then knowing too much anthropology to trust my own instincts Elliott batTzedek I have had not one word from her Frankly I wish I was dead Sappho (Barnard translation) Times change cultures change languages change but the human heart remains the same. As if! As if we don’t [...]

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the relationship between writers and editors has never been easy

Yosa Buson (1716-1783, Japanese writer and painter) The end of spring— the poet is brooding about editors.

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New work up – Psalms and Piyyutim

I’m starting to upload a new section of work – more psalms about assorted subjects from my daily life, and piyyutim, or prayer poems. The latter are, so far, a genre I’m calling “collages,” poems created by weaving together words from many different poets to create one piece that is a kind of dialogue about [...]

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