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Blog – Off-Modern Onions

A Foggy Need for Transformation – Off-Modern Onions

Review of Chasing Fog, folk horror, and yearning for meaning

An Introduction: Or, Justifying My Presence Here – Off-Modern Onions

I’d been thinking for a while about leaving Substack—and then after snooping around the alternatives, settled on this place. As an introductory post, then, I...

A Poet of Weird Mystery, and What Our Roots Could Mean – Off-Modern Onions

The poetry of Jean Follain, roots, genealogy, and John the Baptist.

Actions of Judgment against Self-Erasure – Off-Modern Onions

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About – Off-Modern Onions

Your basic frustrated writer who hasn’t yet figured out where she falls on the spectrum between poetry and academia. Host of the reading-focused podcast Plai...

Off-Modern Onions

Giving my best sour-sweet shot at cultural, ethical, and literary considerations. "Off-modern" is a shoutout to Svetlana Boym, who put forth the term as a wa...

Holiday Schmoliday – Off-Modern Onions

Work that's not work

Great Books and/vs. the Right Positions – Off-Modern Onions

Karen Russell's The Antidote: thinking about literature & engagement

A Super-Brief Consideration of Straight and Speculative Lines – Off-Modern Onions

Looking at Alfred Watkins and Paul Kingsnorth

Just One Damn Book after Another – Off-Modern Onions

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Seeing Reddish, the Best that One Can – Off-Modern Onions

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Call Up the Waters: A Brief Book Review – Off-Modern Onions

Superheroes, Timothy Snyder, and Amber Caron's Call Up the Waters

Considering an Unsimplified New – Off-Modern Onions

The meaning of the new in art and music, not in AI

Just Wandering Around in Thoughts of Beautiful Affinity – Off-Modern Onions

Thinking about community, beauty, and knowing your neighbors.

In Search of a Worthy Burden – Off-Modern Onions

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Envying the Bold – Off-Modern Onions

Summoning writerly and artistic nerve

Another Close Quotational Call – Off-Modern Onions

A reminder of the perils of quoting out of context.

Struggling to Stay Awake in the Haze – Off-Modern Onions

Fighting apathy in smoky weather

Lamenting the Books – Off-Modern Onions

Mourning AI companies' book destruction

One Big Tangled Wall of Words – Off-Modern Onions

Pondering Lacan's wall of language

A Wide Spin of Film and Ad Speculation – Off-Modern Onions

Soundtracks, Tarantino, and Meta all come together

Contending with the Creeps – Off-Modern Onions

Questioning scary movies' effects

Nitpicking Life and Learning – Off-Modern Onions

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Oh, Dolly! Oh, Rocky! – Off-Modern Onions

Remembering Dolly Parton and Tim Curry

Declaiming for Art’s Sake – Off-Modern Onions

Pondering the fate of the artistic manifesto

On Putting Your (Reflective) Back into It – Off-Modern Onions

Bringing in Hugh Kenner and John Kennedy to remind us why the hard things are worthwhile.

The Flash-Bang of Quick Reading – Off-Modern Onions

<p>I've probably spoken elsewhere, and more than once, about the experience I had early on in grad school, where a misreading of the syllabus caused me to ru...

More Poetic Puzzling – Off-Modern Onions

An examination of whether or how much of an understanding of cultural particularity is necessary to understand poetry or literature.

Pondering the Whys of Word Thievery – Off-Modern Onions

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Beliefs, Behaviors, and Belonging – Off-Modern Onions

Does technophobia lead to denial of reality?

Back to the Blackboard: Revisiting Tests in Patience – Off-Modern Onions

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Hamartiology for Technocrats – Off-Modern Onions

Venting about social science language applied to religious and philosophical concepts like sin and decision-making.

Robotic Ambiguity’s Peek at Poetic Understanding – Off-Modern Onions

Celebrating ambiguity, Svetlana Boym, & poetry; puzzling over William Empson

The Curious Silence of a Lucky Find – Off-Modern Onions

Where are the women in Magister Ludi/The Glass Bead Game?

Bitter Poets and Literary Conjecture – Off-Modern Onions

Pondering Ullman’s The Day on Fire, Rimbaud, and Madeleine L’Engle

Returning to a Book and Finding Yourself – Off-Modern Onions

On rereading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time

Proving You Know vs. Bringing Others Along: A Review – Off-Modern Onions

A review of David Hoon Kim's Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost

Bullets Along the Itinerary – Off-Modern Onions

Road trip, horrible truck stop, Catullus

New Definition, Same Old Story – Off-Modern Onions

Assumptions of David Dark's Life's too Short to Pretend You're Not Religious

And Now, Back to the Music – Off-Modern Onions

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Vampiric Repair: A Sort of Review – Off-Modern Onions

A review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and vampires' potential role in restitution.

A Slightly Hypocritical if Earnest Rant About Where Your Treasure/Heart Lies and Etc. – Off-Modern Onions

Thinking about how consumerism influences and interferes with political aspirations.

Waking Up and Moving On – Off-Modern Onions

Lamenting the stultifying writing in scientific research

Back to the Periodic Reminder that My Calling Has Always Been Fraught – Off-Modern Onions

Lamenting the difficulty of accessing research materials when you're not affiliated with an institution or funder.

Close Your Eyes and Live Through Your Tale – Off-Modern Onions

<br> <p>In Munir Hachemi’s <i>Living Things</i>, the narrator ends up convinced that “Some people view storytelling as a kind of therapy or a way of getting...

Looking Back on Boosters of the Machine – Off-Modern Onions

A review of Leo Marx's thought to look at American views of technology, progress, and morality.

Something to Lighten the Load – Off-Modern Onions

Finding joy in spring's first showings

Brief Reflections from an Old Believer – Off-Modern Onions

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Adopting an Existentialist Strategy for Cybertimes – Off-Modern Onions

Embracing the existentialists in the face of subservience to AI.

In Defense of Poetic Fantasy – Off-Modern Onions

Looking at Tzvetan Todorov's thoughts on the fantastic and poetry to be less categorical about literature.

Tsypkin, Sontag, and the Ol' Desk Drawer – Off-Modern Onions

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A Private Joy in Numbers – Off-Modern Onions

Gratitude for a calculus victory and good math instruction

Shutting Up and Embracing the Bland – Off-Modern Onions

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Pondering the Task of Pondering Your Origins – Off-Modern Onions

Considering the usefulness of genealogy

Riffing on Little Phrases – Off-Modern Onions

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Harebrained, Urgent Joy – Off-Modern Onions

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A Knackered Cheer for Real Sentience – Off-Modern Onions

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A Body of Poetic Experience – Off-Modern Onions

Trying to get to a better understanding of poetry overall through John Berryman's total relationship to it.

Lost in Space-Thought – Off-Modern Onions

Consideration of need or not for literary and cinematic conflict, via Samantha Harvey's Orbital

Learning, Reading, Meeting a Challenge: A Bit of Grumbling about Quantification – Off-Modern Onions

<p>As I’ve been learning HTML bit by infuriatingly little bit, I’ve inevitably been thinking about impatience: about both the ways it takes hold in me and t...

What We're Doing with Diaries – Off-Modern Onions

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Apple Pie and the Flinty Eye – Off-Modern Onions

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A Bit of Confirmation from an Expert – Off-Modern Onions

The relief of Michael Hamburger on T. S. Eliot

Narrating My Distress – Off-Modern Onions

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Story and Something More – Off-Modern Onions

Critique of Gottschall's account of storytelling partially through Byung-Chul Han's understanding of narrative

Crediting the Felt Difference – Off-Modern Onions

The difference in poetry that makes a difference

Talking the Talk, from the Right Distance – Off-Modern Onions

David Byrne, Bruce Nauman, and outsiders

Gamy Calculations – Off-Modern Onions

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Trying to Survive in a Shared Sea – Off-Modern Onions

<p>Last week, I blew through Patrick Radden Keefe’s <em>Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland</em>: one of those rare, riveting ...

No Heroes Here – Off-Modern Onions

Lamenting powerlessness in the face of growing US authoritarianism.

Renewing a Living Beat – Off-Modern Onions

Thinking about rhythm and phone addiction

Fabulous Visions and Joyful Inventions – Off-Modern Onions

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A Book with No One to Lead You – Off-Modern Onions

Praise for Kevin Lambert's Querelle of Roberval

Following Models, Wherever You Find Them – Off-Modern Onions

On Marcel Bénabou and not fitting in in the US

For Beauty, More than Ever Before – Off-Modern Onions

Insisting on the importance of beauty

In Search of Civic Ritual – Off-Modern Onions

<p>Since I’ve been rereading a lot of Simon Critchley in the past few days, I’ve been unable to get out of my mind the question he addresses in <em>The Faith...

A Fantastic Nonfailure – Off-Modern Onions

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A Conservationist and His Barbs – Off-Modern Onions

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A Fumbling Reverence for Poetry – Off-Modern Onions

Nicholson Baker's Anthologist displays poetic reverence

Remembering a Different Era of Reading – Off-Modern Onions

Returning to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the class in which I first read it.

Over and Over, Mortality Brings Me Home – Off-Modern Onions

Annie Dillard, Søren Kierkegaard, and repetition into who we are

Catching Out the Quote – Off-Modern Onions

A reminder to find the actual sources of quotations, and not to rely on unverified web attribution.

A Reading Realization – Off-Modern Onions

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Trying to Believe in Writerly Belonging – Off-Modern Onions

In search of confidence that one is a real writer.

On Raveling and Unraveling, and not Interchanging – Off-Modern Onions

Thinking about knitting, teaching, education, and irreplaceability.

Talk-Spawned Fears Running Wild – Off-Modern Onions

The scary podcast Uncanny draws me in with much-needed conversation

Looking for the Mute World – Off-Modern Onions

<p>I found myself nodding along the other day to the issue Roberto Calasso was taking with a <a href="https://kk.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Scan-This-Boo...

Taking an Honest Pulse (or, Surveys, Empathy, Meaning, Oh My!) – Off-Modern Onions

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Forty Days of Acting As If – Off-Modern Onions

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Letting Emotion Ride Well-Shod Over Data – Off-Modern Onions

Looking at the necessity of emotional freedom and the education, especially via art and literature, required to attain to it.

A Sliver of Connection in a Sea of Contempt – Off-Modern Onions

US women’s healthcare compared to Charles Bukowski’s poetry

Still Longforming Like It’s the Year 2000 – Off-Modern Onions

Consideration of Anders Kølle's tech criticism via information theory

Forsaken Music and the Lure of the Solid – Off-Modern Onions

A look at the way sung liturgy shaped me. In lamenting its disappearance, I also consider what belief could mean.

Wordy Games of Confidence and Connection – Off-Modern Onions

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