Parenthetical.net

Yet another conference speaker, who brought a guitar on stage and performed some Tom Lehrer, among other things. What’s with all the musical children’s authors? Maybe music should be Simmons’ theme next time…
I am not a poetry reader, as a general rule. But a few poems in, I was sold on this [...]

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Another conference speaker with whom I was unfamiliar. She’s also a jazz singer, and gave us a lovely impromptu a capella performance (just reinforcing the sense that I was at a folk festival).
I’ll admit, I found her book tiresome. The prose is lovely, I guess, but it was a Woman’s Sexual Awakening and [...]

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Some personal stuff intervened last week*, but I still have many, many thoughts about the Simmons conference to post. The theme was “Crimes & Misdemeanors,” and most of the authors stuck remarkably well to it. A few smart thoughts from smart people, lifted from my notes:
Many people argued that crimes (for a sufficiently [...]

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Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But this morning one of the full-time teachers at the GED center where I tutor was talking with a couple [...]

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