Having vaporized a class bully, Calvin says to Hobbes, “my ethicator machine must have had a built-in moral compromise spectral release phantasmatron!” About a world no less fantastic than Calvin’s, a world in which power-elites... Read More

Mixed with an equal measure of Norman Rockwell and Picasso, an added dollop of suburbiana, a dash of dissociative ennui, and a heroic search for meaning, these twelve stories elucidate the range of typical psycho-dramas being played out... Read More

Today it often seems that a poem is a poem is a poem. Not so this haunting and hypnotic paean to loss, displacement, and the journey to self. Unlike most contemporary poets whose antecedents are either academics such as Lowell, Berryman,... Read More

Between Mitchell, South Dakota with its corn palace, and Halifax, Vermont, the “spiritual center of the universe,” in a dingy bar beside a forgotten highway, one could easily find this poet busy scribbling another postcard from the... Read More

In a world saturated with mass-produced glossy images designed to catch one’s attention, the artist, of all creators, has an obligation to present his vision with a particularly lucid authority. John Hodgen’s poems countermand the... Read More

Late at night, sitting in a greasy spoon, drinking bitter coffee, one eavesdrops on the conversation taking place in the next booth; the sardonic or exhausted tone expresses the sentiment far more than the words, which are more often... Read More

Americans grow up believing in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While Westerners have found relative consensus on life and liberty, an agreed-upon definition of happiness is elusive. Today, according to some, the pursuit of... Read More

“We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself … We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil,” said Carl... Read More