Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Imagine, if you will, a man and a woman whose love for each other illuminates them from the inside. Their skin is effervescent, their mannerisms exaggerated and sporadic. They are timid in each others’ presence, almost. She still flushes softly at his gentle touch in public.
Imagine that you are a part of this couple, and you have come upon a milestone, not only in your relationship, but in your … Read the rest
Her hands were petite and boney like a child. Bruised knuckles the color of dark prune hung over the side of the soaking tub unmoving. An empty glass bottle lay on its side dry as bone as Amelia’s thin body rested in the darkening water. Her eyes gazed upward rounded and vacant like two clumps of brown dirt. The pieces of asphalt that once clung to her knees lay in … Read the rest
July
“Rafting is not worth dying for but it is worth doing.”
-Seth Dow
In July I moved onto a small platform on the riverfront and marked my claim with books. The wooden slat came with its own mattress, a mid-summer rarity in a city full of vagabond guides. It boasted three tarpaulin walls and an angled, waterproof roof. I liked it there. On mornings when I didn’t have work … Read the rest
1
raining carrots
oranges geen
silver drips from the shedtops
while washington market
thrives
and the carts still grumble by
and the pavement sings
to the iron wheels
and darkness chases white
and welcomes blackest black
of pale yellow light
and workmen their wares
amid the thunderous roar
of the city blackness
the huddled blackie stands
beneath the shores of light
and warms a black right hand
and music of … Read the rest
It seems, a Chinese friend of mine has said, that the English speaking people learn to write before thay learn to read; and, when one contemplates the mass of printed matter that issues daily from the presses of our land of nearly one hundred percent literacy, one may be inclined to believe that even before they learn to write, Americans learn how to get themselves published. At any rate, it … Read the rest
Omnia verba suis locis optima; etiam sordida dicuntur propria.
—Quintilian
Rereading Gregory Corsos Bomb, spread out before me to its full length for this occasion, it occurred to me that if he would abandon his mind to it, a man might write such stuff forever, Sir.And not just this one man,but many men many women, and many children.The trick, i then thought, is all in the abandoning in the really … Read the rest
Life suddenly means something, I can , at last, feel.I had in a vacuum for so long,ever since I was a child.Things meant a lot to me as a child,especially little things,Big, billowy clouds perched over green mountains,frogs jumping off mossy logs into stagnant quarry water, snowball fights in a white golf course , a cool breeze,a dog licking my face , my father talking politics, pancakes all were significant … Read the rest
In the first meeting with the editorial board of the Wagner Literary Magazine ,Professor Willard Mass, the newly appointed Faculty advisor expressed some as tonishment at the ecidently beat chracter of the most promising student writing submitted for publication.A campaign was at once undertaken to obtain further material from the student body and to perfect their manuscripts.The best products of that campaign are presented here.
Professor Maas meanwhile, interested in … Read the rest
Dublin University Review Founded in 1885, the Dublin University Review was a high-toned monthly magazine catering to a general readership. The review was edited by the political economist Charles Hubert Oldham (1860–1926), the leader of a “small group of intellectual Protestant Home Rulers in Trinity College” and the moving spirit behind the Contemporary Club (W. B. Yeats 45), and by the poet-journalist T. W. Rolleston (1857–1920), who would later become … Read the rest
Leonid Andreyev’s short story Lazarus begins with a celebration of life, which is also a denial of death. Later in the story this denial is crushed and death emerges victorious over everything.
Lazarus is met by his relatives and friends as if he was a man returning from a war, and like a war veteran who had been exhausted by the war and needed psychological revival which could only be … Read the rest