Are you sick of parallax scrolling yet? You know, the way the foreground and background on a web page, iPhone screen, or Super Mario Brothers move at different speeds, giving the illusion of depth? Parallax scrolling is a gimmick. Take it away and not much changes. Your videogame might be a tad less immersive, but… Continue reading A Parallax Reading of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”On Abuse and Close and Distant Readings
Tag: poetry
A Parallax Reading of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”
The Best Spam. Ever.
Yesterday I received this bizarre spam, from someone "named" Solly Brit. The subject heading was "time card celibacy" and this nonsense phrase only hints at the random strings of English in the message, which reads like some methed-up computer-generated poetry slam: zest, detect pronoun imperfection and lens radically, in as historian disposable of rest home… Continue reading The Best Spam. Ever.
Terrorism Means Never Having to Say Your Sorry
I've been on the blogging equivalent of radio silence for several weeks now, waiting for my handlers to issue the code for me to go on active status. Last weekend was it: Vice President Dick Cheney shooting a 78 year-old man in the face with a shotgun. That was my signal. (Or, close enough: it… Continue reading Terrorism Means Never Having to Say Your Sorry
A lost World Trade Center poem
I recently found a poem I had written years and years ago, in July 1992, which I had absolutely, totally forgotten about. I wrote it in an undergraduate creative writing course with the astounding poet James Reiss. I'm not sure why, but Reiss generally liked my stuff. For an undergrad, I guess it was okay… Continue reading A lost World Trade Center poem
WordCount Poetry
My students and I have been playing with WordCount, Jonathan Harris's slick database of the 86,000 or so most commonly used words in the English language, ranked according to frequency. As Harris points out (playfully calling it a "conspiracy"), there are many sequences of adjacent words in the ranked list of 86,800 words that are… Continue reading WordCount Poetry
Irregular around the Margins
I've been a devoted follower of The Sopranos ever since I borrowed the entire first and second seasons on VHS from a friend, back in 2000. I've managed to see every episode since, even without having HBO, by begging, borrowing, and sometimes just showing up unannounced, uninvited at the right place at the right time.… Continue reading Irregular around the Margins