Aug 6, 2018 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety....
Jul 22, 2018 | Current Ned Note, Past Notes
A gentleman named Ben Franklin launched an all-you-can-read service called the American library system. It costs the general public and consumers at present absolutely nothing every month and gives unlimited access to millions of titles. One single library in this...
Jun 26, 2018 | Past Notes
Night In The Gardens Of Port Of Spain Derek Walcott Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells into a village; she assumes the impenetrable musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat, her alleys odorous with shucked oyster shells, coals of gold...
Jun 21, 2018 | Past Notes
A Final word The note in my pocket says, politicize my death. Rip me out of passive tense the way I was from this place: with a bang. Executions don’t just happen. See how complicit you are. Show me you’ve learned something. Pay attention, it says, to the...
Jun 15, 2018 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes, Poetry
I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that...
Jun 9, 2018 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes
I read something today that really surprised me. The brilliant Kris Rusch wrote that some writers cannot write on planes. This surprised me, because I’ve never been one of those writers who just writes in a certain location or a certain environment. Sure,...
