T. W. Rolleston, 1910. Image with no known restrictions via Internet Archive Book Images and Wikimedia Commons. I can’t remember what I was reading recently that referred to Alfred Watkins, the British photographer and amateur archaeologist who really brought the idea of ley lines into conversation. At any rate,...

Ángel Zárraga, The Poet, 1917. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. I’ve begun to suspect that I enjoy reading talk about poetry more than I enjoy reading poetry itself. For one thing, the latter takes the pressure off my having to figure out what’s going on, or why a particular poem or poet is supposedly so...

Camille Pisarro, L'Île La Croix, Rouen, 1888. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Here’s something I don’t know how to work out: maintaining reverence for the planet and its forms and creatures without falling into schlock. And here’s why I’m immersed in yet another cycle of thinking about that balance: I...

Closcope, Pandrosion the Mathematician. CC BY-SA 4.0 image via Wikimedia Commons. There’s to be no real discussion of weighty matters in this post. Rather, what follows is a simple, and probably too-personal-for-mass-interest, celebration of a small accomplishment. Thanks among other things to having hit the limit...

Dietmar Rabich, Dülmen, Kirchspiel, ehem. Sondermunitionslager Visbeck, Laufgang—2023—6796 (bw). CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. I don’t really have much of a post today; I’ve been trying to think my way through Jacques Lacan’s concept of the wall of language. But like pretty much everything related to the...

Meteorologist John Aitken maybe looking resigned at the thought of having to read dry research. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Well, friends, this weekend’s homework—which I’ll have to get back to after tapping out this little missive—has confirmed suspicions that have been growing over the past...

Ernst Halberstadt, Obsolescence in the Junkyard, 1973. Public domain image via National Archives and Records Administration and Wikimedia Commons. My meditation this week will be brief, since class has begun and I’ve found myself thrown into the maelstrom involved in setting up schedules, orienting myself to...

Jean Veber, Ulysses and Nausicaa, 1888. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. A friend and I were talking the other day about just how ugly so many US American cities are, their unwalkable sprawl out from an often cohesive core into strip mall after parking lot after auto parts store, chain after chain after...

Conrad Poirier, Junior League mobile library at the Montreal General Hospital. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. I first came across Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” when I was twelve or thirteen; it was one of the stories assigned in my seventh grade reading class. I can’t imagine what sorts of meaningful...

Howard R. Hollem, Turret lathe operator, 1940s. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. One of the book-based thrills of the past few days has been getting into Hugh Kenner’s beautifully dense doorstopper, The Pound Era. His approach to depicting the world out of which Ezra Pound and his peers emerged, how they...

Rudolf Kalvach, Inspiration, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. I think it was right before the Covid era that I went to a Patricia Lockwood reading. During the Q&A, someone asked if she ever suffered from writer’s block, and if so, how she handled it. Of course, I remember her saying; when it happens, you just keep...

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Miss Shuttle-cock. Public domain image via British Museum and Wikimedia Commons. Try staying calm and sanguine about humanity after going through an hour lying prone and exposed while a radiographer conducts an ultrasound complete with color commentary. Maintaining closed eyes to keep from...