The Kurt Cobain Game

Sui­cide is tricky. For the indi­vid­ual, it promis­es an absolute end to a cer­tain kind of tem­po­ral pain, sure — but then, just as quick­ly, it trans­fers that pain onto oth­ers. And accord­ing to its alge­bra, the mul­ti­pli­ers can be huge.

In the absence of Mr. Cobain there’s a lit­tle game I’ve played, The Kurt Cobain Game. I wrote about it for Hobart today: “Kurt Cobain Does­n’t Know Much Of Any­thing.”

Midsummer Threnody

New poem, “Mid­sum­mer Thren­ody,” in the lat­est Hawk & Whip­poor­will.

This is, more cor­rect­ly, a very old poem — writ­ten a decade ago, sub­mit­ted nine years ago, moments before H&W went on long-term hiatus.

The hia­tus is over. And so is my old approach to poet­ry. Free verse is tol­er­a­ble, and can even be occa­sion­al­ly good, if you look at it as not poet­ry but prose — lazy prose.

It’s the sol­stice, and I know that gen­res are shift­ing their bearing.

A Visit From the Time Ghost

the time ghost

I spoke with William S. Bur­roughs a few times in the final years of his life. I miss him, and recent­ly I was shocked but hap­py to hear his voice again — it was com­ing out of the pages of Dostoyevsky.

Yes, I’ve been think­ing of Bur­roughs late­ly, and I’ve encoun­tered him, and I’ve been think­ing about many oth­er things that are appear­ing, too.

First pub­lished in Got­News as “A Vision From the Time Ghost.”

Twitter Breathes New Life Into Orwell

It began with­out notice or warn­ing: reports pil­ing in of peo­ple sud­den­ly banned for their beliefs, ques­tion­ing jour­nal­ists hav­ing their IDs unver­i­fied, minor­i­ty voic­es pushed off to the shad­ows. This led to a gen­er­al Fear all around. In the back­ground, war drums were beat­ing. After sev­er­al days of sud­den bold strikes, there’s real­ly no ques­tion: Twit­ter — the com­pa­ny — is wag­ing a total ide­o­log­i­cal war to nar­row the range of per­mis­si­ble thought …

First pub­lished in The Dai­ly Caller.