Why I Wrote “Purging Wallace Stevens”
Unfortunately, I was deeply affected by the poetry I loved and/or studied as a university student — Rimbaud, Tagore, Elliot, and so many others. Wallace Stevens was perhaps the most difficult to understand, and I loved his work all the more for that, just as I loved Wittgenstein or Hegel. I really understood very little … Read more
Flummoxed About My Music (plus, a free song)
Update 12 Apr 2013: I wrote this about six months ago, but now, I am no longer feeling so “flummoxed.” The musical path forward is getting much clear. See What Music Means (to Me). I confess: I am flummoxed. (Translation: deeply puzzled about what to do.) Why? Because I don’t know how to reach my … Read more
Announcing Two New Books from Alan AtKisson
Now available for purchase online, or for ordering through your favorite bookstore: two new books by Alan AtKisson Because We Believe in the Future: Collected Essays on Sustainability, 1989-2009 is a greatest-hits selection of Alan’s best articles, speeches, and blog posts over a twenty-year period. Woven together by personal commentary, these essays offer the reader … Read more
Reflecting on Life, Sustainability, and Star Trek
How different would my life be if I had never seen Star Trek? The question occurred to me because recently — in a fit of nostalgia, or out of a simple desire to have something to watch on the TV at 11 pm, when I’m too tired to read, and not quite sleepy enough to … Read more
The Summertalker’s Moment of Revelation
In this country of traditions, which has captured my heart and caused me to set down roots as deep as a modern human can have (family with children, house, bank accounts, taxes, habits of behavior and mind), there is a tradition that is quite modern, as recent as radio. “Summertalkers” is not a beautiful word, … Read more
What Lady Gaga and I Have in Common
You might be expecting a humor piece — “I once dropped a piece of Parma ham onto my lap, where it draped across my leg as though it were a patch on my pants, just like Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress” — but I’m actually quite serious here. I’m not really a Gaga fan, no … Read more
On Being an American Troubadour at the Swedish Climate Change Conference
This is the third and last installment on my series of posts from the Climate Existence 2010 conference, organized by my friends and colleagues at Uppsala University’s Center for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS). To read the posts in order: 1. Bill McKibben 2. David Abrams I am on the 5:23 morning bus, leaving the … Read more
David Abrams: Breathing ourselves aware on planet “EAIRTH”
This is the second in my series of posts from the conference “Climate Existence 2010.” The series began with a post on Bill McKibben’s opening keynote. This one covers the afternoon keynote and the workshop I went to, which awakened some memories … “We don’t live on the Earth. We live in the Earth. Or … Read more
Why J.M. Coetzee may be the greatest living writer in the English language
If you were a novelist committed to writing great novels, in the literary sense, and you won the Nobel Prize, what would do? Coetzee, who won the prize in 2003, keeps writing great novels. I picked up his most recent, Summertime (2009), in an airport bookstore, and started reading it while waiting in line to … Read more
