Back to lit crit

 Posted by (Visited 5962 times)  Writing
Jul 022006
 

Once upon a time, this website contained a section of academic literary criticism papers. They were all written while I was in graduate school getting my MFA; mostly on Modernism, but also on a few other topics.

Well, at some point — probably when we launched this bloggy version of the site — the section fell away, and resided only in old backups. Which is somewhat of a shame, because believe it or not, something like my essay on Bharati Mukherjee’s short stories was one of the few available online, and therefore was cited from time to time.

It’s all back now, even though I imagine most of you who read the site could really care less. Probably the only ones who will care will be college students who have found a small trove of fresh papers to plagiarize. The whole thing is linked off of the Writing section of the site.

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The Sunday Poem: Scavenger Crow

 Posted by (Visited 5886 times)  The Sunday Poem
Jul 022006
 

His claws and beak, tools of hunger, classify
Kernels on a tree powdered into gold.
I wish I did not recognize myself in him.
Where is his murder? He marks his boundaries,
Removing wood from corn, placing corn
In gullet, no flock beyond the sky and caw
Of hunger. A metal thing, he is,
Ball-bearing eyes and hammered feathers
Rusting away. He sorts to understand,
Desperately separating grains from wood grain,
A glutton wasting half his food.

This is a poem about analysis, I think, about the impulse to understand, and about what we lose and gain in the process. Mostly lose, in this case.

A big day

 Posted by (Visited 11940 times)  Misc
Jul 012006
 

Today is a big day, because yesterday, my contract with Sony Online expired.

Alas, I now officially have no paycheck either. 🙂