FAMILY EXTRAVAGANZA By Meg Tuite What is it that struggled within my oversized head that made my body nothing more than transport apparatus beneath it? The legs moved when expected, as did the arms, but the face twitched as fast as a hummingbird swilling across the air toward sugar water and the eyes tracked horizons … [Read more…]
Tim O’Brien gives writers a lesson in dialogue during the last quarter of Going After Cacciato, when he writes: “It is humorous?” asked the captain. “You find desertion humorous?” “No,” Oscar said, “but I find it kind of funny.” (223) This brief exchange is excellent because of its realistic use of repetition. The variations make … [Read more…]
Shakespeareophiles have no doubt noticed couplets not rhyming in an occasional sonnet or soliloquy in a way that the context suggests they should. I know reading John Donne and Shakespeare myself I have encountered more than a fair share of lines that simply don’t rhyme — and it ruins an otherwise impressive structure — so … [Read more…]
Many remember Martin Luther King Jr. as a social activist, a man who led demonstrations, and a powerful speaker; but I have always most admired King for a skill sometimes overlooked. Though his proclamation of “I have a dream” still reverberates through our nation’s social fabric, it was not his voice that made that speech so potent, … [Read more…]
THE ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE AS TRIGGERING DEVICE by Dean Bartoli Smith I. “Discovery is the ideal. . . . When not writing a writer may search for a triggering device, and literature is one of several places to find it.” – Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town At a meeting of the Downtown Poets Club in San … [Read more…]