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::Richard Canard, Carbondale, IL::

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=Hanging up the Old Pen=

Philip Roth did it. Alice Munro did it. Why not me? Here's a link to a short essay I wrote about retiring from writing, now appearing at South85 Journal:

http://south85journal.com/blog

=Why lie about the "real?"=

(Kathy Acker)

Why bother with the lie of realism? Why bother being so miserable, reductive, when one could play? If I'm going to tell you what the real is by mirroring it, by telling you a story which expresses reality, I'm attempting to tell you how things are. In other words, realism is simply a control method. Realism doesn't want to negotiate, open into, even know chaos or the body or death. Because those who practice realism want to limit their readers' perceptions, want to limit perceptions to a centric—which in this society is always a phallocentric—reality.

"I am the one," says the realistic writer, "I'm telling you reality."

I have the same quarrel about narrowing anything to single identity. 


In other words, behind every literary or cultural issue lies the political, the realm of political power. And whenever we talk about narration, narrative structure, we're talking about political power.

The desire to play, to make literary structures which play into and in unknown or unknowable realms, those of chance and death and the lack of language, is the desire to live in a world that is open and dangerous, that is limitless. To play, then, both in structure and in content, is to desire to live in wonder.

=unbearable nonsense=

"The only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense."
—Kathy Acker

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::Claudia McGill, Wyncote, PA::

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::Jon Foster, Winston-Salem, NC::

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::Moan Lisa, Iowa City, IA::

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::Amy Irwen, Rosemount, MN::
"MiniArtQuilt"

A really fantastic idea!

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"...as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of an umbrella and a sewing machine." --Lautreamont

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Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman

::For Joseph Cornell for Emily Dickinson: Remake of Toward the Blue Peninsula::

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::Richard Canard, Carbondale, IL:

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::Vic Jonez, Darmouth, MA::

The cosmos as seen through the transparent head of Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-headed god of death? Just a suggestion.

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::Richard Canard, Carbondale, IL::

"Postcard cut from an abandoned yard sale sign"

—Congratulations to Richard. Lately he has surpassed "Egyptian Porn" as the #1 reason people visit this site via Google searches.