Kanye West divides and provokes and resides like few entertainers suspended in the stratosphere of fame. His skill as a musician is indubitable, but so is his misbehavior. To some, he is a prophet of the heavens, speaking Truth to … Read More
“When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.”
If you have never heard Van Morrison’s yearning, keening voice—its blues and jazzy swag , the way it stretches words into birds that fly you to heaven, its worn beauty—well, then, you’ve never heard it. But I bet you have; … Read More
My stomach is parched from having just peed into the muddled ground. And it hurts from having nothing to eat, no ring pops, no soda, no sunflower seeds. It’s an empty hole, a cosmic hole— it could collapse now into … Read More
I sit and breathe and try to recall my whole life. I now sit serenely in the brush by this shouldering road. It winds tightly through the Peloponnesian town of Megalopolis, where I sit, through the pink stucco homes clinging staccato to the high side of the mountain our bus, heaving, climbed. Rapt speech in the restaurant behind is mere chatter.
The son-poem continues / by these pastoral lines , / in my ears put / by father , as / words of the mouth of / the poem ‘ s / father , on a short morning / saunter / he set out on alone /
Rarely is one so revised by experience, which like a river washes away the calcified sand of the soul to describe itself there anew. Rare, too, is the ability to recognize this revision. School had just ended, its shoulder-weight just … Read More
Eminem, for all his lyrical violence—threatened and skillful (i.e. killin’ y’all fools on this lyrical shit)—is not a bully. He is the bullied, the victim. He is the wee scrawny white kid from a predominantly black part of Detroit, rescued … Read More
“I never change; I’m too stuck in my ways.” There is a hope that we forget that “corrupt but necessary” college admissions process once in college. This, of course, is hypocritical and hopeless, for who hasn’t heard that kid boast … Read More
Egypt is the place to be right now. Personally, I don’t want to be there, but it is certainly the best place to be. I am jealous of those who are there right now. Before I explain why, a little … Read More
