I’m going to sit right here, let time wash over me. I’m going to sit right here, let time wash over me. Got to travel in mind because I can’t be free. Sit wise like a rock, let years rain on my head. Sit wise like a rock, let years rain on my head. If I … [Read more...]

KEYNOTE REMARKS, GODDARD COLLEGE MFA IN WRITING PROGRAM, JUNE 27, 2006 When we speak of “points of view,” we usually think spatially: about geographic location, social positioning, or psychological perspective. I’m going to take a different tack and ask you to … [Read more...]

The Guantánamo suicides. Suicide as “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Suicide as “a good P.R. move.” Suicide as self-determination. Suicide as pragmatic response to the problem of an unbearable existence. Suicide as a text: “This is my letter to … [Read more...]

“Finally, I had this moment where someone was listening. It was amazing to be heard. When it disappears, and you’re back in the dark again, it’s sort of disappointing,” says Jean Rohe in a comment on the media reaction to her New School commencement speech. Or at … [Read more...]

NOTE: For a more straightforward account of my take on the McCain protest, go to my piece on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jan-clausen/the-new-school-commenceme_b_21606.html …because they have learned how to hollow out democracy and make it … [Read more...]

The term “McCain Mutiny” is the invention of my father, Victor H. Clausen, who, along with my mother, visited me in New York during the run-up to the May 19th Madison Square Garden donnybrook and not only tolerated but encouraged my hectic round of organizing … [Read more...]

In his memoir The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, Samuel Delaney uses the metaphor of parallel columns to refer to the ways in which the parts of our lives that might variously be labeled “private” and “public,” or … [Read more...]

Today was all green and blue and pink and white like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The lilac in my back yard, planted a dozen years ago as a tiny slip of a bush, has gotten so tall I have trouble reaching to cut the blossoms, but I love looking down on them … [Read more...]

I’m teaching Samuel Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction in the East Village to my undergraduate class (“Reading the Queer Renaissance”). This is only the second time I’ve read the book; the first was last summer, when I was … [Read more...]

I was going to write about June, about June Jordan, I wanted to write about what it’s like to watch, to watch your contemporaries complete themselves in death so there will be no more, no more words, so every word becomes so much more valuable than when it was just … [Read more...]