Author: Brian

Name-changing is in the air. Streets are getting new names, university buildings are getting new names, and people are starting petitions to change the names of their cities, (and seriously, nothing needs to be named Plantation at this point, no matter when the city was founded). And on that note, I'd like to suggest another … Continue reading John Slidell, Loser

Last night, my left wrist hurt really badly. Sharp, searing pain through the joint, bad enough that I put down the project I was working on and started searching for connections between crochet and carpal tunnel syndrome and wrist braces. They've been hurting more or less for months now. I didn't want to stop crocheting. … Continue reading Writing and Crochet

A friend posted this on social media. I don't know who the original maker of the image is or I would credit/thank them for it. This is the one time of year I regularly miss south Louisiana, but maybe not for the reasons people who've never lived there would understand. Mardi Gras has this somewhat … Continue reading Coming up next

I can't even remember most of the year, and I don't really talk too much about personal stuff anywhere online anymore, but I do have two pieces of writing news to share here, both of which meant a lot to me personally. The first is that one of the poems from my collection A Witness in … Continue reading Year in Review?

This morning, I saw a person I follow on Twitter quote-retweet to this tweet from James Woods about being the victim of gun violence with his own story about how he'd been victimized and yet still didn't own or carry a gun. I was robbed at gunpoint in a New York subway in my twenties. … Continue reading Something Something Guns

The student union at Iowa State University is, as at many state universities, also a war memorial. It's in the name: Memorial Union. The main entrance is what is known as Gold Star Hall, and carved into the stone walls are the names of Iowa State students who were killed in the wars and other … Continue reading War Memorials

I ended my class a little early and hurried back to Des Moines today because I had to join my partner and her colleagues and students at Drake University in a show of solidarity against racism. I say "had to" because I considered it a moral obligation. I wish it weren't necessary. But some anonymous … Continue reading Confronting Racism

I decided a number of years ago that I wouldn't pass judgment on poems or collections other than to say that they didn't work for me for whatever reason. I try to articulate those reasons when I review books or talk about poems, but sometimes the answer is as simple as "I am not the … Continue reading Shakespeare in Translation

We live in a historic neighborhood, as in a named-on-the-National-Register-of-Historic-Places neighborhood. It's the only neighborhood we've lived in during our time in Iowa. We didn't rent or buy here because it was historic. We chose this neighborhood because it's convenient to work and downtown, and because it's walkable to both areas. The big thing you … Continue reading What’s Historic?

It didn't. I didn't even kill it, though I apparently put it into a long-term coma. And maybe this isn't a full awakening, though I think I'd like it to be. So why snark on Facebook in the title? Because somewhere along the way, I stopped writing for myself, and for the smaller audience I … Continue reading Facebook Killed My Blog