Category Archives: Fiction and Poetry

A Question about Interpretation and Influence

Something bugging me. It’s been bugging me since 100 Days 2008. But it’s come back since I’ve been reading Hargood and Millard on Narrative and Theme. It’s bugging me in a good way. But here’s the story. Let’s say you watch John Timmons’s video perusals. Of course, a first viewing will produce an interpretation or [...]

Summer Projects

Monday is the Solstice. 8:30 or so and dusk can still be seen. Great. This summer I have a few projects. Some are trivial. Prep for Fall teaching, bone up some programming. Other things not so much. In May I decided to learn how to play the guitar. And 100 Days is pulsing like the [...]

On Going Back to School

I’m teaching myself how to play the guitar. I have the Idiot’s Guide and a Fender acoustic, whose neck is too small for my left hand but is nonetheless playable. Too small, because at the size of my fingers, it’s tough to play something like A without the index rubbing up against the third string. [...]

A New View of hypertext Cadif/Juanita in Tinderbox 502

Here’s a view of my hypertext fiction Life for Cadif, Life for Juanita, which is being readied for reading across multiple devices, primarily the iPhone: A larger view

Bolaño and the linked text(s)

Matthew Hunte via Twitter provides me this interesting examination of Roberto Bolaño oeuvre. It was brilliant. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was a game but also a joke, a humongous joke. I felt gratified. I was anxious to read more from him. I needed a new hit, so I went to the library and took [...]

Submit to Otto: Poetry, Fiction, Non-fiction essay and more

Critical message from the Otto team: OTTO, the Tunxis Art and Literary Journal, is seeking submissions from all members of the Tunxis community for the 2010 issue due out in April. Submit your work by December 31 via email to otto dot tunxis at gmail dot com. Submit literature (creative or expository) as a Word [...]

The Moon in Poetry (and Code)

I was particularly taken by the poetry of Li Po and Du Fu after a recent discussion with the World Literature students. There’s something about “talking it out.” I’ve been involved in reading Chinese poetry over the last few years in an effort to see and hear better. The study of these poems is linked [...]

Steps

1. Open export folder for Cadif 2. Open iPhone and story.css in editor 3. Open Tinderbox file for Cadif (it synthesizes poetry and prose) 4. Pick up on last action before leaving to blow leaves, which was to find individual poem spaces and crowd the stanzas 5. Click note and open html view and reduce [...]

Narrative Moments

When we open up Kalidasa’s Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection we’ll ask a simple but important question: what is the process by which the King enters the hermitage? It’s a pretty simple context: if the king doesn’t go into the “tranquil place” of the hermitage, he’ll never encounter Sakuntala. I won’t necessarily ask whether [...]

On Sleep No More

Mark Bernstein on Sleep No More: This was extraordinary theater, an unforgettable penetration of the fourth wall. It is also extraordinarily difficult. It’s not improv: the story, it turns out, is scene 21 of Woyzeck. You’re acting across from a stranger. A different stranger every night. In a closed room. The rules are unclear, we’ve [...]

Rereading Kerouac

Dan Green has a thoughtful post on rereading Kerouac. He comes to an interesting conclusions about style and form. Green has me wanting to hit The Subterraneans, which is what good writing about books should do.

2666 and Some of its Parts

Roberto Bolano’s novel 2666 is a turbulent structure. The reader may be interested after reading “The Part about Archimboldi” to go back to “The Part about the Critics” to rethink the timing of events–when do the critics venture to Mexico in their hunt for Archimboldi? And where is Archimboldi while the critics are in Santa [...]

Completed, 100 Days

The summer 2009 100 Days project is complete. The participants have been: Carianne Mack, watercolor paintings Jessica Somers, photography Susan Ersinghaus, photography John Timmons, sound composition and photos Susan Gibb, hypertext fictions Maggie Ducharme, meals Neha Bawa, poetry Mindy Bray, photography Denna Hintze-Yates, verbal image Mary Ellen Molski, character and story Steve Klema, sketches conained [...]

2666, A Few Introductory Notes

Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 is immediately interesting and powerful. One element that stands out in the novel is Bolaño’s love and devotion to his characters and his method of letting them be and letting them go where their natures take them. That’s a pretty sweeping way of talking about Pelletier, Morini, Amalfitano and Faith (as [...]

100 Days and Word Counts

The following image is a snapshot of my 100 Days Tinderbox “Published” adornment, which backgrounds the monthly containers for the project. With the help of Mark Anderson, I now have each month displaying total word counts. The graphs are also an indication of daily word count jumps. One of the ideas I’ll be looking at [...]