Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled May 18, 2024The Biggest Crisis A #PoliCartoon by me and Becky Hawkins.
- Untitled May 17, 2024#PoliCartoon: Fat Patients, Fat Patience #FatAcceptance
- Untitled May 17, 2024Thinking of that time that Degas painted the actress Ellen Andree sitting and looking pensive in a cafe, and Monet saw Degas' painting and decided to find the same actress and get her to pose in the same cafe so he could do his own version.
- Untitled May 17, 2024Copyright claims often go too far, crushing free speech and not allowing for the way artists are influenced by, repurpose, and even coincidentally echo, other art. Not this time, though! Jeff Dieschburg is a straight-up tracer who adds NOTHING original when he paints his copies of photos. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled May 17, 2024#PoliCartoon: Defending Free Speech
- Untitled May 16, 2024The Existence of Trains Debate #PoliCartoon #Climate #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming
- Untitled May 18, 2024
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
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
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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
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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
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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
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
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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
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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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