One such patient, under my care, describes how he must “wake up” his phantom in the mornings: first he flexes the thigh-stump towards him, and then he slaps it sharply—“like a bay’s bottom”—several times. On the fifth or sixth slap the phantom suddenly shoots forth, rekindled, fulgurated, by the peripheral stimulus. —Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales It is a great temptation, when a part of you has been cut away, to welcome... Read more
For a few years in the late 1990s, early 2000s, I brought a book of poetry with me whenever I went to synagogue for Shabbat morning services. After I was settled into my pew, I’d discreetly slip the book out of my tallis (prayer shawl) bag, tuck the thin volume of poetry inside the thick prayer book open in my lap, and, while the rest of the congregation prayed, I’d read poems. While the congregation was chanting the opening passages... Read more
From Chris Stapleton’s rootsy repurposing of Nashville pop-country to Sturgill Simpson’s “metamodern” new-Outlaw nihilism, the past few years have seen Kentucky-born artists setting the agenda for a different kind of country music—not so much a complete break with the past as a series of unpredictable mash-ups of what’s come before. Simpson protégé Tyler Childers is the latest major voice to emerge out of this scene. Despite the Simpson connection, and despite having gone to high school in Stapleton’s own Johnson... Read more
My favorite film from last year is a farce. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread functions like a twisted screwball comedy: Its momentum is the back-and-forth seeking of the upper hand in the relationship between Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Alma (Vicky Krieps). But narrative momentum does not always move the viewer. Anderson’s films can be emotionally elusive, worlds that are beautiful to look at but difficult to enter. Or, sometimes we can get caught up in one of Anderson’s worlds,... Read more
Wilkinson welcomes us into his poem with ease and familiarity, referencing “Sean” and “Jens” like we are all old friends chatting to kill time on our commute. The conversation begins with the mention of the “anaconda / they had found once / in Sean’s cattle pasture” and moves swiftly through visceral, associative memories: cleaning pigskins, performing autopsies, waiting in traffic only to see a naked “flower child” wandering along the road. Wilkinson’s poem is rife with dark, sensory flashes, met... Read more
The sun was high in the sky. Midday, late July. The light was washed out. The black of the asphalt was washed out, not even gray anymore, not even a color. Albuquerque is divided between the people who, at midday, go elsewhere and the people who don’t go elsewhere. As I said it was midday, and the people were mostly elsewhere. We walked slowly down the side of the block that had the shade. I was rolling my stupid suitcase... Read more
In twenty years (maybe fewer?) will people still be reading what we’ve come to call the “literary” novel? Considering how fast technology is changing the imaginative landscape, is it really preposterous to say that the serious novel as we know it will have receded into a connoisseur culture, an affectation indulged in by a respectable sum, but no longer a standard among the written arts? Technology affects everything. It even changes our ability to see in ways other than its... Read more
At first I didn’t know that I was dying. I’d been rushed to the hospital emergency department because I couldn’t breathe, put on oxygen and wheeled right to Intensive Care. The week or so in ICU is a blur now. But ICU must have been where it was discovered that my kidneys were failing—because I do remember the huge dialysis machine rattling away in my room for hours at a time. (more…) Read more
When we first decided to move to Minnesota, there were plenty of opinions. “You know it’s cold there,” people said. “Are you ready for all that snow?” they asked. “People literally die from frostbite all the time,” one family member swore. “You can get it just driving around in your car!” (more…) Read more
On a tactile level, we are reminded of the common experience of salt in this poem by Amy McCann. How it cures and crimps, the taste of tears on your face or floating, mouth open and vulnerable, in the sea. We are also introduced to a complicated voice who describes herself as “The lick I am.” The wife that “put everything I loved behind me.” Perhaps we are meeting Lot’s wife–a nameless female who was turned into a pillar of... Read more
Good Letters
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