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Tag Archives: creative writing
One Shall Be Taken
Two horses–look again– Winged, like cherubim– Watering at a marble trough, Ivy in riot about them. Reality? Silence, bones Saline, a coffin–not a trough– And a tale in the main that Had been uneven, rough, harsh. I’d have done it differently. This … Continue reading
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Tagged cemeteries, creative writing, death, literature, poem, poetry, rapture, writing
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Embrace Chance?
In a collection of art essays by Roger Kimball titled Art’s Prospect (Ivan R. Dee 2003) is an essay on a Matisse exhibit in which Kimball writes the following (151): [Matisse] arrived [in Morocco in 1912] in the rainy season, … Continue reading
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Tagged Alan Ginsberg, art, chance, contingency, creative writing, existentialism, Freud, literature, Matisse, Neal Cassady
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A Creation Story
__________ It seems to have started as an argument. Nothing became something, rapidly expanding to a whole laundry list of things. Separation and settlement followed. Over time things cooled. Mother got her planets, Father took to the stars. As in any divorce, vast … Continue reading
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Tagged creation, creative writing, evolution, Genesis, life, literature, origins, poem
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Bringing Darwin Into Your Fiction: A Few Things Creative Writers Might Consider
A key element in Charles Darwin’s thought is that survival and the opportunity to reproduce attends the fittest and the sexiest. Think about this Darwinian insight in relation to your writing: what would a Darwinian reading of your story notice? … Continue reading
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Tagged biology, creative writing, Darwin, evolution, fiction, literature, philosophy, psychology, science, writing
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Dance With Me (In The Interpretation Of Lines From Yeats)
When reading something, guessing about an author’s exact state of mind is sometimes tricky, but it’s still fun to play. Take for instance William Butler Yeats’s poem, “Among School Children.” The Yale literary critic Paul de Man once noted that … Continue reading
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Tagged art, Buddhism, creative writing, critical thinking, interpretation, philosophy, poetry, reading, the self, Yeats
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One of Ayn Rand’s Questions: What’s the Relationship of Art to Concepts?
Two novels-of-ideas by Ayn Rand (1905-1982)–The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957)–and the individualist and pro-capitalist positions that she laid out over the course of her lifetime under a philosophical system she created and designated “objectivism,” have had an outsized … Continue reading
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Tagged art, atlas shrugged, Ayn Rand, creative writing, literature, objectivism, philosophy, psychology, worldview
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A Quote for Writers: Jodi Picoult on Writer’s Block
The author of Lone Wolf doesn’t believe in writer’s block: I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it—when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper … Continue reading
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Tagged art, creative writing, life, literature, quote, writer's block, writing
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What the Lightning Said: My Definition of Art
Art, by my definition, is a report of what the lightning said. It’s bound up with the ontological mystery (the mystery of being itself); an artist’s attempt to represent to others an experience of that mystery (what it feels like … Continue reading
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Tagged art, creative writing, definition, giorgione, God, lightning, mark twain, meaning, religion, stephen greenblatt, the ontological mystery, William Blake, writing
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Advice for Dying Fathers (Contra Dylan Thomas)
_____ Leaves cling, do not go gently, but go just The same. The signal is yellow; the alive Are always downcast before being cast down. Look! The green team winning all summer Is starting to lose badly, going bald in The stunning … Continue reading
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Tagged aging, autumn, creative writing, death, Dylan Thomas, English, fathers, life, literature, poems, poetry, Santi Tafarella
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Why Read Literature or Watch Good Films? Martha Nussbaum on the Role of the Imagination in the Cultivation of Empathy
Here’s a great quote from Martha Nussbaum’s new book, From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (Oxford 2010, xvii): That ‘terrified’ gay teenager needs, and deserves, equal respect, and a sphere of liberty equal to that enjoyed by … Continue reading
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Tagged college, creative writing, democracy, education, ethics, film, literature, martha nussbaum, morality, poetry, teachers
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Christopher Hitchens, Henry David Thoreau, and Peitho
Christopher Hitchens was recently interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, and offered an interesting tidbit on a rhetorical strategy that tends to work for him: [W]hen I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It … Continue reading
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Tagged Christopher Hitchens, creative writing, Henry David Thoreau, peitho, persuasion, Politics, rhetoric, writing
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Rod Serling is the Devil!
Not literally, of course. But it occurred to me this morning that Rod Serling’s appeal as a guide to his Twilight Zone episodes is this: he functions as a sublimated devil, the camara darting him into visual consciousness out of nowhere. Serling is a Virgil, but not … Continue reading
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Tagged creative writing, fantasy, imagination, life, rod serling, Satan, science fiction, the devil, the twilight zone, vain imaginings, writing
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Entering the Twilight Zone via Solitude and Day Dreaming, and Maybe Meeting the Devil (or Rod Serling)
Last week, I wrote a meditative piece on the role that solitude plays in the life of the mind, and how I felt it to be akin to entering Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (see here). I suggested that if you expose … Continue reading
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Tagged apostle Paul, creative writing, creativity, imagination, rod serling, Satan, solitude, St. Paul, the devil, the twilight zone, thoreau, walden
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“The Prophet”: a poem by Santi Tafarella
Beauty is the first ugliness in line, making those behind blind. The candle’s orange tongue, declaring for God, assures darkness is elsewhere. Your truth is a mask for an undisclosed motive.
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Tagged apologetics, creative writing, isaiah, jeremiah, Jesus, literature, Mohammad, Nietzsche, philosophy, poems, poetry, writing
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