“That process of soul-waking (as distinct from Keats’s ‘soul-making’) finds an analogy, as the monologue unfolds, in Lippi’s defense of his art—its realism (truthfulness, he’d say) as opposed to the spiritualized naturalism of…

“Pearl Fryar was over six feet of lean, chocolate muscle in jeans. He had a bit of gray and a hundred-megawatt smile. In his enthusiasm, he reached out and hugged me. He engulfed…

“Since 1980, the year I moved to Greece, there has been no single year in which the US and/or Israel has not been involved in Middle East military conflicts—bloodshed that frequently impacted friends,…

“Chris transported Lola to and from work safely in a backpack and ensconced her in a dog stroller to keep the chicken safe while she was out on the farm working. Using an…

“Speaking of flowers, when I drive by (or join) the protestors these days I’m reminded of the ‘flower power’ years of my youth. In the 60s when it began all we claimed to…

“I hesitate to call this work a poem because I don’t really know what constitutes a poem anymore. In many ways I would like it to be closer to a folk tale. I…

“Though he got most of the facts wrong, it appears that in seeking to create the Mount Rushmore Memorial, Borglum was inspired by a story about Alexander the Great which appears in the…

“The first person who enchanted me with her well-spun stories was my stepmother, Betsy, who arrived in my life when I was eight, four years after my own mother had died. Although she…

Singing & Drowning By Janet Kenny “I have a song to sing-oh. Boy, do I have a song! I was a young, inadequately prepared singer, fresh from New Zealand and it was the…

Signal & Memory By Daniel J. Dodson “Civilization does not advance through new energies or new machines alone. It advances when symbolic systems cross a threshold—when they become simple enough to spread, strong…