So, I’ve been reading Thoreau’s “Walking” with Imagining Reality (my creative nonfiction class).” It’s the essay that contains that famous declaration: “[I]n Wildness [not ‘wilderness,’ as it’s commonly misquoted] is the preservation of the World.” After an … [Read more...]

I teach creative writing to undergraduates at a certain liberal university in the heart of Greenwich Village (the one that keeps changing its name). It has long been apparent to me that much of this university's thinking about what constitutes good teaching in its … [Read more...]

Here I sit, sweltering in yet another mid-September day on which temperatures were supposed to reach ninety degrees and probably did. We’re in a terrible drought, the trees and bushes in Prospect Park more exhausted-looking than I’ve ever seen them. Tomorrow is … [Read more...]

“It looks like the hull of a slave ship,” Rev. Jesse Jackson remarked, commenting on images of destitute, immiserated African-American flood victims abandoned in New Orleans. Last week, as the magnitude of the socially constructed horror that piggybacked on that … [Read more...]

Nothing (not even sex) is more outlandish, more bizarre, than the fact of death as a consequence of birth. That we should become aware, should suffer, should strive, learn, build up our brains, attach ourselves to beloved others—then have to give it up. Nothing … [Read more...]