The Formal Imagination of Oulipo
Founded in 1960 by a collective of French mathematicians and writers, Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature), or Oulipo, was established to identify new forms of writing...
View ArticleL’Appel du Vide: On Visual Caesuras and Erasure
I take the five students of my poetry micro-workshop outside to discuss Claudia Emerson’s latest collection Impossible Bottle. As we sit in the sun, bending over the brilliant bright book pages, a...
View ArticleSpace Fiction vs. Space Discovery
Co-authored by Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix, Beyond Earth gives many readers more questions than answers. Beyond supplying the non-scientist with foundational information on what we...
View Article“Adventure of a Skier” and Calvino’s Theory of Lightness
Last week, the New Yorker released the first English translation of Italo Calvino’s “The Adventure of a Skier,” which first appeared in the 1970 short story collection Difficult Loves. But how does...
View ArticleThe Nearness of the Moon
It can sometimes feel like a poetic cliché to even look at the Moon. It seems almost too easy a way to summon cyclicality, illumination, mystery, and even romanticism. The Moon is always shifting...
View ArticleItalo Calvino and the Form of Outer Space
Literary texts and other categories of art often give rise to questions about the relationship between form and content. These questions can be deceptively simple: Why is this poem suited to be a...
View ArticleItalo Calvino and the New Gods of Boston
In 1972, Italo Calvino wrote that “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.” Nearly five decades later fear seems to have the upper hand. This year, my understanding of Boston, where I...
View ArticleKnowing and Not Knowing in Italo Calvino’s The Written World and the...
The Written World and the Unwritten World Italo Calvino (translated by Ann Goldstein) Mariner Books Classics | January 17, 2023 The release of The Written World and the Unwritten World, a collection...
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