Tag Archives: writing

Reading ‘Reading Ulysses in Montana’ in Texas

Posted on May 15, 2025 by JMN

Delving Yardbarker is the nom de guerre of the creator of “Reading Ulysses in Montana.” As with Luvgood Carp, it gives me pleasure each time I say “Delving Yardbarker.” Sonorous, compressed, quirky, inventive, mischievous, literate, subversive, diverting, intriguing, outrageous, prolific, … Continue reading →

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I Need Some Writer’s Block

Posted on March 26, 2025 by JMN

Really, I should draw, paint and read more, write less. It’s a constant struggle to pipe down.  Poetry, for one thing, triggers me. Intending to read a bait of versifying, before I know it I’m a keyboard Roman candle ejaculating … Continue reading →

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Blast From the Past: My Favorite Correction in Journalism

Posted on July 12, 2024 by JMN

A link encountered recently in other reading led me to this obituary in The Times’s archive. You will discern from the excerpts what left me biting a grin. (Respect and love for the memory of Jerry Garcia. He would’ve grinned … Continue reading →

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‘Cuando Me Vaya’ by Javier Sánchez

Posted on November 20, 2023 by JMN

The Spanish text I translate to English here is from Las palabras de Javier (November 16, 2023). In reading poetry of the day I brace for being left in the lurch, for being denied more than a cerebral engagement, at … Continue reading →

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OCCD

Posted on August 13, 2023 by JMN

Some persons, of whom I may be one, are beset by the brevity demon. Obsessive-Compulsive Concision Disorder is an aggressive form of self-effacement, a weaponized modesty that clamors furtively for slivers of bandwidth under cover of a solicitous compunction over … Continue reading →

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Ocean, On Writing

Posted on August 9, 2023 by JMN

“It’s very hard to write well accidentally.” (Ocean Vuong) (c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Etel Adnan: ‘Words Are Social’

Posted on July 26, 2023 by JMN

Lebanese-American painter-poet-novelist Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was interviewed by Gabriel Coxhead for the June 2018 issue of Apollo. In the 1970s, having returned to Beirut to work as a journalist, she was forced to flee to Paris when the civil war … Continue reading →

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When the Work Be Done, Then Rest Will Come

Posted on July 9, 2023 by JMN

My title sounds like a hoary aphorism distilling virtuous wisdom passed down through the ages in simple, God-fearing households. But I just made it up. The “aphorism” models usage gone all but missing from English. An encounter with it in … Continue reading →

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The Case of the Bashful Punchline

Posted on June 25, 2023 by JMN

Jared Bartman. [New York Times illustration] “Is it ever easier?” a young writer asked me recently. “Do you ever grow a thicker skin?” She was suffering because an essay she’d written about the death of her mother had been rejected … Continue reading →

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Notes on Poetry (‘Expressing the Unsaid’)

Posted on May 26, 2023 by JMN

He was so handsome, so fine and flinty and long-boned, that he was a shock to be around — he made people stupid, or teary, or angry or skin-starved, sometimes all at once. (Dwight Garner) (Dwight Garner, “Sam Shepard and … Continue reading →

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