I Me Me Meme*

Recently I tried to explain what memes are. I started into a teacherly explanation about how cultural units behave like genes, getting passed on and, in many cases, mutating into new forms and a hundred visions and revisions. I said, “Think of the peace sign logo, urban myths, advertising jingles, jokes that fly around the [...]

Finds: American Literature (Two Serious and One Not so Serious)

This week, I’m offering three sites I typically share with my American Literature Class: The Library of Congress, American Memories, which is site that contains a treasure store of American cultural artifacts, like advertising, maps, dime novels, etc. It will link you to many more external sites as well. Voices and Visions was a wonderful, [...]

Haiku Sonnet 2: Signal to Noise

Just to watch us pass, the child moves from window to window—her hands up to rest on the panes— She stares as if she isn’t seen. Her lips move. The half of conversation we see is code and—without her necessity— meaningless. You’ve said something I haven’t heard and the child smiles, waving behind the glass, [...]

Haiku Sonnet 1: Departures*

source Spitting city rain riddles the sidewalk with spots of ghost animals. Those who once really roamed here weren’t so exotic, their camouflage brown, grey and tan, colors of Chicago now. This rain isn’t wet enough to bring any life back, isn’t wet enough to pool. In the alley, a squirrel climbs from a dumpster [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Lost and Unfound

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, “The Empty Museum” 2004, installation, sound, light. Photo by Hermann Feldhause In my museum of lost things, everything is invisible, marked only by the scent of regret. The windows are never open and any visitors weep in corners, unable to find their way out. I inventory— a wince for each item [...]

Finds: Wandering In Dictionaries

     My fourth grade teacher had a class set of dictionaries, and some Fridays, she’d pull them out for finding games. I never won. I’d always get lost when another word or illustration distracted me. Dictionaries are reference tools, but they’re also great places to wander. You may have already noticed Urban Dictionary in my [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Her Explanation

She wanted to draw stars over the moon’s black half—the space cried for light, for company. She thinks stars deserve every seed bed in blank sky— if they won’t grow, then let them bury night in flecks of salt no sea could dissolve. Let them sit. In the lost part of the sky, the invisible [...]

The Haiku Life

Writing my daily haiku, I sometimes ponder the discontinuity between my life and those of the masters I revere. They were monastic and, for much of their lives, itinerate. Basho writes of his journeys, Buson had little care about making money as a painter, writer, or human, and Issa frequently composes haiku about flies, mosquitoes, [...]

Haiku Sonnet: The Fetch*

Uncle claims a fetch stands at the edge of his wide mouth of sight. The least turn scares a fetch, but Uncle talks loudly. “Who joins in when the song’s quiet?” he says, and his fetch harmonizes. Each morning they wake together, mattress edge twins. Uncle stands to let the fetch follow. This dance was [...]

AKA Joe Felso

Oh so many years ago, I saw a Labor Day Parade in New York City or, I should say, some friends and I happened upon it. Labor Day festivities may be different now, but that parade seemed half-hearted, a few marching bands and workmen walking behind alphabet soup banners or waving distractedly from crepe-papered flatbed [...]