Diligently Seek

Steak Steak makes me feel I am an animal. I become aware of my teeth, My marrow, That my jaws are bones, The potential of my flesh. I forget what it cost to get steak. Meat is a thing to me Alone. A cow is a thing to me Apart. I cannot mourn a thing I never saw, A thing that makes me visible. When I think back to the places I have been, Where steaks are raised to die, My nostrils flare in protest Of the stench of a fecal mixing bowl: Larger than my neighborhood, Deep enough to creep over the edge of my boot, A horror I cannot bring inside to meet my wife. So I enter barefoot into the grilling place. The gaseous corps of a steak, Oozing green, delicious to flies Makes me feel I am an animal .

The Creation Groans with You: An Image of America             One might use pigeons to summarize the American view of nature.  They are compelling and revolting birds.  They live where Americans live.  No matter how urbanized or cultivated an American city is, it remains a natural habitat for pigeons.  On the same square where fake owls and offensive smells have been introduced specifically to make these birds stay away, vendors sell seeds to those who wish to feed them.  Even as their feces corrode American monuments, pigeons are an essential characteristic of monuments.  Pigeons summarize the mythology of nature by which American thinkers have viewed the themes of cultivation and wildness.  Early European settlers of America brought ideas with them about the wilderness and The Garden of Eden.  These ideas created a tension between respect for the wilderness and hostility towards it.  The wilderness was either an awful desert or a glorious paradise.  As Bruce Ballenger put it,

Lions Write History The festivities were riotous no doubt. Hundreds of speeches and exclamations in praise of the achievement of liberty in America had been given. Lavish fireworks, thrilling parades, and elated jingoism prevailed in Rochester, New York on the 4th of July 1852. The next day, at mid-day, about 600 attendees of mixed ethnicity gathered to hear a token affirmation of the cause of freedom and equality in America from a recently freed African-American slave. No doubt a post-holiday malaise settled over the crowd as they calmed to listen to the introduction of their speaker. As the electric countenance and distinguished features of Frederick Douglass approached the podium, the crowd grew silent – and a thunder clap issued from the rostrum: “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?  . . . I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! . . . The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common . .

To Know No More: A Discussion of Women’s Letters in Early United States History A review of best-seller lists in the last ten years would demonstrate that women are thoroughly represented as authors. The popular successes of Suzanne Collins, E. L. James, Stephanie Myer, and Anne Rice  make it difficult to imagine that women were ever neglected as a source of American Literature. They very much were, however, and to a significant degree they still are. Nevertheless, women’s letters in the United States represents a vibrant and prolific genre and a thorough study of it has begun in recent decades. One way that a researcher might undertake the task of promoting greater appreciation for the genre might be to recover the works of women that have slipped through the cracks and incorporate them back into the corpus of our American canon. Such a study may not be adequate. The paucity of privileges available to women versus men throughout the early centuries of American history was q

An Uninvited Woman, or Nothing             It was a frantic, disorienting way to wake up.  Sleep flew without warning away from danger and abandoned me to the ticklish task of disentangling the space between the reality presented in my dream, and the reality presented by my sentience.  In that instant between self awareness and the dreamscape of self examination, I saw her a second time.  I cannot impress upon you her image until you grasp the dangerous and frightening aspect of her presence.  She hovered above me, right in my face as an unfamiliar – though at the same time an inescapably familiar – specter.  She wore a black shawl with frayed wrappings which slithered around her countenance.  She had black, wild, hair that appeared to have the texture of straw. She wore a severe, awful, and violent expression. Her face and physique were beautiful, yet all the more repulsive for her beauty. Evil saturated my bedroom. Sweat poured from my body and adrenaline doused every sensatio