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It is my contention that any politician who runs on a "tough on crime" platform should be investigated for corruption.…
Apologies for the rambling but I have a half-formed thought I wanted to work through here. It feels like a…
Thanks! Done partly for realism, and partly so I'd have one word less to fit in the balloon. :-p
I like the realistic touch where you have the Republican congresscritter say "ban trans from participating in sports," instead of…
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Author Archives: Richard Jeffrey Newman
What I Tell My Introduction-to-Creative-Writing Students on The First Day of Class
“The first duty of the writer is the rectification of names—to name things properly, for, as Kung-fu Tze [Confucius] said, ‘All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by the right name.’” —Sam Hamill, “The Necessity to Speak” To … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching, Writing
15 Comments
Articulating Why You Think Your Work Matters
I wish I could remember who gave me the advice that you should never submit poems with a cover letter explaining what you thought the poems were about and/or what you wanted them to accomplish. To explain, this person said, was … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
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Contract Signed! Words for What Those Men Have Done Will Be Out Later This Year
Please forgive the back-to-back self-promotional postings, but I am excited! My second book of poems, Words for What Those Men Have Done, has (finally!) found a home with Guernica Editions. The book should be out later this year. Here are the lines from which the book’s title … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
4 Comments
Two of My Poems Are Up at Flatbush Review
I am very happy that Flatbush Review, a new and exciting online literary magazine, has published two of my poems, “Clean,” and “Not Yet The Women They Would Grow Up To Be.” Interestingly, they both take place in the rain. Hence, the image … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
2 Comments
Everyone Who Reads Rumi in English Should Read This New Yorker Article
Written by Rozina Ali, the article is called “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi,” and it says something that Iranians I know have been saying for a very long time—something that I learned from them, in fact. … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, Islam, Writing
5 Comments
More on the (Gender) Politics of Artificial Insemination
In order for sperm banking to become the multimillion dollar industry that it is, sperm had first to be commodified, and since commodification is both economic and cultural, that is neither a simple nor a straightforward process. As Cynthia Daniels … Continue reading
Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights
9 Comments
Thinking Some More About Antisemitism
(Note: The image above was taken by Naomi Ellis, the mother of the family discussed in the Washington Post article I discuss briefly below.) In the context of a discussion we’re having about an essay I published recently on Unlikely Stories called … Continue reading
Posted in Anti-Semitism
10 Comments
The Politics of Artificial Insemination
To prepare for a talk I’ll be giving in April, I am reading Cynthia Daniels’ book Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction. I just finished the first part of Chapter 4, “Commodifying Men: The Science and Politics … Continue reading
Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights
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Sweeney is the perfect accompaniment to a tough-on-crime comic. I bet the Judge had invested money in the prison industry.