I’m reading “The Art of Fiction” by James Salter, an essay full of treasures, like for example this, on the language of Isaac Babel: It’s like a handful of radium—a brilliance you would never imagine. and then – on writing: Of course, not every word can be the perfect word. Not every room overlooks the river….
Tag: prose
worth trying?
To my surprise I have found my own writing to be a kind of hybrid genre, placed somewhere in between poetry and the essayistic. I love using hard-facts, you know: the quantifiable ones …, and am daily playing around with facts about the world that I find in encyclopedias and on pages like this &…
soon there will be more on red …
ROSECRANS BALDWIN: You don’t read poetry. That’s fine. Nobody does anymore. I’m not going to make you feel bad about that. But if there is one book I’ve pressed on more people in the past decade, it is Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. And I’m here to tell you its sequel has just been published, and that…
… a leap from red to blue
After having spent several bewildering & enchanting days in company of Carson’s Autobiography of Red, I’m moving on to blue, or more precisely Bluets. Bluets, by Maggie Nelson is (if I am to be honest), in its own ways, just as amazing as Carson’s Red. This is how the publisher presents Bluets: A lyrical, philosophical, and often…
What I learned in school today?
Today I have taken my poetic writings to a prose class, just to hear that: my language is original my images are beautiful my text has a strong & personal voice my story is totally incomprehensible Oh – I’ll better search for comfort elsewhere: Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When…
Did no one ever tell you this?
Some recent posts by Richard Gilbert made me very curious, Gilbert was quoting Verlyn Klinkenborg saying things like: Chronology is a trap. It’s not natural; our own interior world is not chronological. Always resist chronology and The sentence is the basis of your art. Think, make sentences, and revise. Rhythm is everything, first and last. Talking…
sub rosa 