Random thoughts, further to reviews and book sections

So what are we looking for in reviews? Perhaps I am one of the few who believes that reviews are an opportunity to entice readers. Maybe pedagogical concerns don’t have…

parc la fontaine, outer path, frozen pond

The walking, and skating, continues, ice worms and all. The latter a nostril feature of these arctic temperatures. The description is not mine, but it is an accurate sensation of…

Dear Geist: Jonathan Ball takes up the Question of Reviewing

Dear Geist I am writing to you in response to Michael Hayward’s review of Michael Winter’s novel The Architects Are Here. I have not read Winter’s book, and do not…

The Mountain, Some Feathers, Strong Looking and Swoops

Of course they’re trouble…if you google “woodpecker” you’ll find lots of references with exclamation marks that read something like “woodpeckers are attacking my house!” or “how to stop woodpeckers from…

Sarah Dowling reads Erin Moure

Gust The inevitable proposition survived as contentAfter the fins were eaten or laid down, the tablecloth gently billowing & our knees beneath that was a serenity a a vocabulary or…

Some steamy, some clear: winter in Montreal

Glass in the city of excess takes to winter in a variety of ways, becomes frosted, steamed, wet, so hard and clear it seems on the verge of exploding. Light…

The unreality of war, part two

Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) 1992 The above image, courtesy of the Tate, is one of Wall’s…

The unreality of war

The photograph above is currently on the front page of the online edition of the Globe and Mail accompanied by an article that describes a formidable ground attack on Gaza…

Conceptual Fiction

We have come to know conceptual writing largely through the world of conceptual art and poetry. But what about conceptual fiction? Or narrative conception? What new forms lay in store…

Happy New Year!

Resolutions* Read more books, less blogs.* Buy more books in person.* See more art.* Discuss more writing here and everywhere.* If it moves you: let them know. Directly. Immediately.* Be…