Three Deer in Oquossoc BY SONJA JOHANSON East will take me back. I drive west. I wend between snowbanks, until the road delivers me to a sleeping boat launch. They stand on the frozen ramp; watch me with coats that are better than mine. Ice houses and snowmobiles edge the distance. I have to turn around, I say to them, I went the wrong way. They stamp and chuff. No, they tell me, this is the way.
Aquarium, February BY LIZ AHL When ice outside makes daggers of the grass, I come to where the tides of life still flow. The water here still moves behind the glass. In here, the seasons never seem to pass— the sullen shark and rays still come and go. Outside the ice makes daggers of the grass and coats the roads. The meditative bass won't puzzle how the blustery blizzards blow. The water here still moves. Behind the glass, rose-tinted corals house a teeming mass of busy neon creatures who don't know "outside." The ice makes daggers of the grass and oily puddles [...]
February & my love is in another state BY JOSÉ OLIVAREZ so when i walk down the street, i hold hands with the wind. there’s a chimney coughing up ahead & a sky so honey, i could almost taste it. a cat struts away from me & two yellow eyes become four: just like that, i’m the loneliest creature on this block. soon the streetlights will come alive & television sets will light up with blues. stay with me. while the sky is still golden, hold the ladder so i can climb, & from the highest rung, i can scrape away a [...]
Book of The Month: Now Is not the Time to Panic (2022) by Kevin Wilson Critical Evaluation “This story is much more likely to break your heart than your funny bone. Wilson is witty, to be sure, and he has a firm grip on the absurdity of domestic life, particularly families and their strange, terrarium-like realms. But if there’s comedy here, it’s steeped in melancholy. Crucially, this strange summer of 1996 is framed in the novel as a set of wonderful and horrible events that took place 20 years ago during a worldwide spasm of anxiety about “the shantytown filled with [...]
Winter Morning BY JAMES CREWS When I can no longer say thank you for this new day and the waking into it, for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair and the ticking of the space heater glowing orange as it warms the floor near my feet, I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me and believes he deserves only safety and comfort. But if I pause as I do now, and watch the streetlights outside flashing off one by one like old men blinking their cloudy eyes, if I listen to my [...]
The Snow Arrives After Long Silence BY NANCY WILLARD The snow arrives after long silence from its high home where nothing leaves tracks or strains or keeps time. The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal, bears up like sheep before shearing. The cat at my window watches amazed. So many feathers and no bird! All day the snow sets its table with clean linen, putting its house in order. The hungry deer walk on the risen loaves of snow. You can follow the broken hearts their hooves punch in its crust. Night after night the big plows rumble and bale it [...]
Philes and Phobes We owe a great deal to Greece, and I’m not referring to moussaka, delicious though it is, or even to concepts of democratic governance, momentous though they are. I have something more fundamental in mind, for insofar as language underpins human society, the linguistic impact of Greek on English is far-reaching. The Greek alphabet influenced the Latin alphabet, which many countries use today, and thousands of English words in both general and specialized circulation derive from Greek, including “alphabet,” which, fittingly, embodies the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: “alpha” and “beta.” Xenophon Zolotas, a onetime prime [...]
Applying for a Position? Check Out These Resources. Cover Letters Guidance: Broad Institute (https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/broad/commkit/cover-letter-for-a-faculty-position/) Examples: Harvard University (beginning on page 20) (https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/ocs/files/gsas-cvs-and-cover-letters.pdf) Curricula Vitae Guidance: Indiana University Bloomington (https://education.indiana.edu/students/careers/docs/CV%20Guide.pdf) Examples: University of Toronto (https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/Creating-Your-Academic-CV.pdf) Resumes Guidance: Georgetown University (https://careercenter.georgetown.edu/major-career-guides/resumes-cover-letters/resume-formatting-tips/) Examples: University of California, Davis (https://icc.ucdavis.edu/materials/resume/samples) Research Statements Guidance: University of Pennsylvania (https://careerservices.upenn.edu/application-materials-for-the-faculty-job-search/research-statements-for-faculty-job-applications/) Examples: Boston University (https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2017/10/research_statements1.pdf) Teaching Statements Guidance: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/teaching-statements/) Examples: University of Michigan (https://crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstpum) Diversity Statements Guidance: Vanderbilt University (https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/developing-and-writing-a-diversity-statement/) Examples: University of California San Diego (https://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/_files/examples-submitted-diversity-statements.pdf)
Tolo, A Virtual Choose Your Own Path Adventure by Dana Sheridan and David Deen Please join Princeton Writes in congratulating our 2017-2018 Princeton Writes Prize winner (and 2014-2015 Honorable Mention winner), Dana Sheridan, on her newest publication. With David Deen, Dana has just released Cotsen Children’s Library's first digital book for kids – Tolo, a virtual choose your own path adventure! The digital book, Like all Cotsen Children's Library initiatives, is free and open to all. Please share it with young (or young at heart) readers and children’s writers! Follow this link to adventure! https://cotsen.princeton.edu/tolo .
Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise BY JAY HOPLER Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated, And every porch light in the neighborhood is lit, Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new Way of experiencing the world, a way of taking Into myself the single light shining at the center Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric Planets orbiting around it. What you'd like is a more Attentive lover, I suppose—· Too bad that slow, Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards The storm drain is not a vein of stars . . . [...]
