Month: December 2011
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Post #24: Take this Poem, and Listen to It
Alan Heathcock, a writer I admire, recently wrote a fabulous short essay for NPR about reading a poem a day to quiet his mind and steady himself against the bustling life he (and we all) leads. I listened to the audio version of Alan’s piece while waiting for the shower…
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Post #22: So Much Gray
There’s been some interesting debate in the wake of Amazon.com’s strange decision to urge its customers to scan items in brick and mortar stores and then receive a discount from Amazon if they buy said item through the website, rather than in the store, whether it be a Best Buy…
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Post #21: Where My Boys At?
An aspect of my NANOWRIMO experience not yet chronicled here is the amazing group of students at the high school where I teach who also took on the 50,000. A few reached their goal. Many came along for the ride and produced a substantial amount of writing. They thrilled and…
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Post #20: Under 500 Words on an Album that Changed my Life, Part Two
The summer of 1992, when Extreme’s Three Sides to Every Story came out, I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school. The album, compared with its multi-platinum predecessor Pornograffiti, sold only 700,000 copies and was largely considered a commercial failure. But that deserves some context. We all know that…
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Post #19: Best of Lists and Middle Class White Guys
Here’s a couple of articles I found thought provoking. The first, by Roxane Gay, examines the “Best of…” lists that have become such a part of what establishes literary “excellence.” Gay makes a compelling case regarding their legitimacy and usefulness. http://therumpus.net/2011/12/toward-a-more-complete-measure-of-excellence/ The second is by Benjamin Hale, a writer who…
Benjamin Roesch 