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PAUL CHRISTENSEN
Creative Writing Workshops
Someone sent me a copy of Dan Barden’s “Workshop: A Rant Against Creative Writing,” which has been making the rounds on the internet. He...
The Dark Side of Prose
I’ve been thinking about newspapers lately, and their most recent avatar, TV news, both the network and the cable kind. What intrigues me...
Irony and the 21st Century
19th century philosophy is rife with allegories about a will (Schopenhauer) or a war-like divine force (Nietzsche) or a spirit (Hegel)...
The Elusive Truth
Truth keeps getting harder to recognize these days. I am reminded of Antonioni’s film, Blow Up (1966), in which a photographer happens...
Disunited States
The recent invitation John Boehner extended to Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress was an unprecedented sign of...
Progress and Freedom
A well-known literary agent recently confided to one of his clients, “Ours is a dying profession.” He was referring to the writing...
Muslims and Democracy
A report I heard today on NPR’s “Morning Edition” notes that the Muslim population is now intermarrying with native French Christians at...
Some Things Never Change
Some things never leave the memory. They’re made out of whatever stone memory secretes, a granite made of emotion that doesn’t wear down...
Old Texas
All the old cotton towns of central Texas have the same forlorn look. Navasota, Bryan, Hearne, and Calvert sprawl across stretches of...
REVISING POEMS
Here are some tricks to revising a poem that simply won’t come off the page. Cut to the first action line of the poem, and delete...
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