Original Poem: St. James’s Place
Sean MurphyI've only been to Atlantic City one time (friend's bachelor party, obvi) and, admittedly, not being a gambler or fan of rooms thick with cigarette smoke (circa 2002), and loathing…
2022: A Creative Recap
From 1455’s Movable Type, Issue 13 (peruse the complete archives, here). So, what’s next? It’s possible this endeavor could continue to evolve and grow in the right ways, or we might…
Original Poem: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
It continues to be a joy and honor to have my work appear –alongside so many excellent writers– in Exterminating Angel Press. The theme of the Winter 2023 issue is All…
Pelé: Ambassador of Joy
There are two ways to describe what a big deal it was to receive this toy as a Christmas gift in 1970-something. First, it was high tech entertainment for the…
The Fire Sermon: T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” at 100
Art is long, and Time is fleeting, Longfellow wrote, and we’d already read it—words largely if not entirely lost on the average university freshman. It was 1989, and I was…
Christine McVie: RIP, Songbird
She was beautiful, preternaturally cool (has any singer of so many incandescent and indelible hit singles sounded so effortless and laid back?), and her graceful vibe was crucial to this…
1455’s Movable Type, Issue 13: The Story
Having offered our first live programming since Covid shut the world down, it’s at once a source of pride and anxiety to recall those early months of 2020, when we…
Kurt Vonnegut at 100
So It Goes: Reflections on Kurt Vonnegut (written after his death in 2007 and included in my first collection of non-fiction, Murphy's Law Vol. One). Kurt Vonnegut would say in…
The Killer: He Didn’t Want to Miss Out on Great
“If I had it all to do over, I'd do the same thing again. I think I would, because if I didn't, I'd miss out on something great. I've had…
Deliver Me From Nowhere: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ at 40
Perhaps because of what followed—the next album, the acclaim—Springsteen’s decision to make the ultimate lo-fi album seems even more prescient, appropriate, and perfect. If Darkness on the Edge of Town was a,…