March/April 2009 Cover Image

Real Fakes & Inauthentic Others

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Alyce Miller
I've often wondered what would happen if all books were bound in black or white covers with nothing but the title and maybe the author's name to guide us. How would we approach the work? Would we walk around it, give it a sniff, tap it with our foot, see how it reacts?
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Satire, The Craft: A Partial Handbook

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Marilyn Krysl
Now, thanks to the flourishing of satiric art across the media, satire is enjoying a revival in which most students not only get irony but are often well versed in its lexicon, including most importantly the context in which a potentially ironic remark is couched.
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Sin's Entertainment: On Dante's Inferno

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Martha Cooley
Dante's descriptions of his imagined underworld creep right into that part of the mind which simply cannot shake off the willies. Children know that the scariest things are those we dream up in response to a few well-placed hints-and Dante is nothing if not a master of the beautifully dropped, deeply unnerving suggestion.

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The Minimal, The Miniature, & The-Little-More-Than-Nothing

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David Rivard
When Robert Creeley passed away in 2005, a number of his obituaries mentioned a wry comment once made about him by Richard Ellman-simply, that Creeley had played the role of "Minimus to Charles Olson's Maximus," a reference to the central figure in Olson's epic series.
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An Interview with Rebecca Lee

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Thomas Kunz
I love unrequited love; it's at least one of the things that makes the world go around. Longing, desire, the need for the imagination to constantly seek out the other, to try to speak where nobody is listening. It's beautiful, though also terrible if you happen to be in the midst of it.
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A Conversation with Baron Wormser

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Renee Olander
There's no question that writing the first book broke the ice in terms of writing about experience over a period of time-also the sections are comparable in length.
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The Useful Object Or: What's That You've Got There?

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Michael Byers
So a subtle adjustment of character relations is demonstrated by means of the cigar. Webster smokes and, temporarily in charge of things, tells his story. Webster's tale is a flagrant fabrication from start to finish, full of fantastic cliches...
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Remembering Grace Paley

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Alexis Lathem
I met Grace Paley in 1994. As the co-founder of a small environmental group, I went to the Haymarket People's Fund for a grant, and Grace was on the board. We had to show up on a Saturday morning in Randolph, Vermont to present ourselves to the board with all the other applicants. I spotted Grace at once, sitting at the large conference table with the other board members and grant applicants-her wild grey hair made her as iconic a literary figure as that of Marianne Moore in her tri-cornered hat.
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