The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians–because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize  injustice and to speak out loudly against it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people…. So let us look for beauty and grace,  […]

Modernist manuals on writing often conflate every story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in […]

  I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry–poetry in the broadest sense, in a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs–is how the world world. The world isn’t logical, it’s a song. ~ David Bryne