The writing process
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On bad penis puns.
Modern English is built on a foundation of The King James Bible and William Shakespeare – the former, plagiarized from a person we burned on the stake for his efforts; the latter, Lord Regent of Bad Penis Puns, as though his very name compelled him: Willy-I-Am Shake-Spear, Billy Wagcock, old I am a dick now…
bad puns, Barbara Hamby, capon, Christopher Logue, competition, consensual nonmonogamy, cooperation, education, Emily Wilson, Entitled, etymology, Eugenia Cheng, fornicate, gender, history of English, humor, hysteria, James Joyce, jealousy, Joyce, Kate Manne, Mansplaining, Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, men, mythology, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, patriarchy, Penelope's Lament, penis, penis puns, poetry, polyamorous, polyamory, puns, scortatory, sex, sexuality, Shakespeare, slang, teaching, Telemachus, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Ulysses, vagina, vulgar slang, War Music, women, X+Y
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On writing.
By writing, we can prove that we really do exist. But not everyone in jail has access to even as much as a sharpened pencil.
action permanence, depression, deprivation in jail, drug trip, drugs, ego death, jail commissary, jail poetry, medicine, mushroom tea, pencil sharpener, pencils, pencils in jail, Portland, psilocybin, psilocybin mushrooms, psychedelic, psychedelic drugs, psychedelic medicine, psychedelics, PTSD, PTSD cures, Sacred Knowledge, shrooms, suffering in jail, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, trip, trip report, William Richards, writing, writing in jail
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On translation.
Translation is imperfect, and dangerous, and we should all do it. The act of putting another’s thoughts into our words will bring us closer.
addiction, Cathay, Cherry, Christopher Logue, drug addiction, Ezra Pound, Hayden Pelliccia, Homer, imperfect translation, incomplete equivalence, Iraq, Iraqi translators, literal translation, literary translation, literature in translation, Mark Polizzotti, military interpreters, military service, military translation, mistranslation, Nico Walker, Perry Link, Sympathy for the Traitor, The Iliad, translated literature, translating literature, translating poetry, Translation, War Music
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On ‘The Theft of Fire.’
Stories are powerful things. A world in which workers are brought into a country as farmhands is very different from one in which barbaric kidnappers torture their victims to extract labor. A world in which death panels ration healthcare is different from one in which taxpayers preferentially fund effective medical care. You’ll feel better about…
AI, angry gods, comparative mythology, death panels, description of slavery, discovery of fire, discovery of the atom bomb, essay about fire myths, essay about the origin of fire, evolution of fire use, Fire, fire myths, fire myths in human evolution, gratitude practice, history textbooks, human evolution, ideology, invention of fire, invention of the atom bomb, Jury S. Judge, medical rationing, modern mythology, mythology, mythology of the atom bomb, myths of the atom bomb, Palaver, poem, poetry, Robert Oppenheimer, Rosalind Franklin, stealing fire from the gods, storytelling, the discovery of fire, The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Theft of Fire, thermodynamics, ways we describe the world
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On clarity, Matthew Zapruder’s “Why Poetry,” and reading Bruce Weigl.
We should strive for clarity, out of love for those willing to listen.
abuse, Billy Collins, blaming victims, Blast Furnace, Bloomington, Bruce Weigl, childhood, clarity, drug abuse, drug use, honesty, honesty in writing, Introduction to Poetry, jail, mass incarceration, Matthew Zapruder, memory, metaphor, Monroe County Jail, New Leaf New Life, poems, poetry, prison, psychiatry, psychology, PTSD, rape, recovery dorm, rehab, rehabilitation, repressed memories, say it clearly and you make it beautiful, sexual abuse, Spotlight, symbolism, The Impossible, Tom McCarthy, trauma, Why Poetry, writing
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On post-apocalyptic historical fiction (and Neanderthals).
Neanderthals were human, and now they are gone. How did the last survivor feel?
apocalypse, cannibalism, Collapse, cross-species mating, depression, DNA sequencing, extinction, food taboos, homelessness, Homo sapiens, human evolution, human extinction, Moore’s law, Neandertal, Neandertal DNA, Neandertal genes, Neandertal religion, Neanderthal, Neanderthal DNA, Neanderthal genes, Neanderthal religion, Paul Kingsnorth, post-apocalyptic historical fiction, religion, symbolic behavior, The Wake
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On ‘Cat’s Cradle’ and whether or not it’s sci-fi.
The science is realistic, but, more importantly, the science doesn’t matter. The story is about people. Oh, and, the world ends. Whatever.
Cat’s Cradle, catalysis, classics, energy barriers, fate of the universe, ice-9, Kurt Vonnegut, literary fiction, mad cow disease, math analogies for non-math people, Pages to Prisoners, prions, qwerty keyboards, resistance to change, sci-fi, science fiction, science versus philosophy, speculative fiction, the big freeze, the meaning of life is protein?, the stickiness of bad ideas, thermodynamics, transition-state energy
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On poetry: Erin Belieu’s ‘When at a Certain Party in NYC’
You can’t always get what you want – from your local library – but you might just find, you get what you need.
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On octopus literature, a reprise: what would books be like if we didn’t love gossip?
Of all intelligent species I know of, only the octopus evolved its mind for purposes other than keeping track of gossip.
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On humor (and bad medical advice).
In which I write a bodybuilding-mag-style paean to eating cat feces.
Frank Brown Cloud 