By ‘politics in Wrong Norma’ I mean the kind of politics that Emily Wilson in “Fox and Hedgehog” finds lacking in Anne Carson’s first book:

She has much to say about the intricacies of “Sappho’s mind,” but nothing about her complicated status as an aristocrat in an era of political turbulence and revolution….

Wilson later observes that the author has bro…

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Technically, I have the same ratio of microplastics to testicular tissue as a cis woman—none. In the year or so after my orchiectomy, I feel my hips rounding, my breasts growing fuller. I wonder how my ratio of microplastics to breast tissue compares to cis women.

I used to be more concerned with how my body stacked up against cis people. I measured my w…

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Coined by Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway, the Plantationocene acts as a counterpoint to the Anthropocene, shifting focus away from the often abstract concept of human impact on the planet and highlighting the concrete realities of how specific systems—such as colonial exploitation, capitalist economies, and large-scale agriculture—ha…

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“Poverty Remix (Sestina)” is the piece in Wrong Norma that gets the most attention from Emily Wilson in her essay “Fox and Hedgehog.” It concerns the ancient Greek poet Hipponax, whom I had never heard of. I confess I skimmed it in on my first read, a bit intimidated. Wilson’s essay—maybe inadvertently—helped me see its importance.

Hipponax spoke an obsc…

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One of my teeth is rotting. I broke it as a pre-teen, and for whatever reason it needed to be fixed only once. Then the fracture gradually started staining, and now things have gotten out of hand and the rot has set in.

I worried about it for a few days and considered whether I should go to a dentist here in China (some insurance) or next time I’m in Ca…

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When I was a child my family would drive from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Springfield, Missouri, each summer. My aunt and uncle lived there and another set lived in Dallas, so this was the intermediate meeting place. There were three events that took place during the trip: a day at Silver Dollar City (an amusement park with a backwood…

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A few months before “Gloves On!” was published, Emily Wilson’s review essay “Fox and Hedgehog: The Myths of Anne Carson” appeared in The Nation. It’s a dazzling effort to both praise and dispraise Carson, employing a wide variety of tones—many with shades of sarcasm—and laced throughout with both insight and animus.

Reaction to…

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In August of this year, London Review of Books published Carson’s short talk “Gloves On!” where she meditates on mortality and tells of the diagnosis, the symptoms (one in particular), and the boxing workouts (hence the title) that are par…

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The semester finishes late in China, and I needed to come back early in August to take care of some administrative business. So I fit in only a very short trip this summer, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Jakarta, Indonesia.

I avoid checking in baggage whenever possible, and this time my ultra-budget fligh…

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Dear Chad,

I surmised “Psychomanteum” was a portmanteau so surreally gussied it deserves an infomercial that proceeds documentaries about middle earth holidays. Holidays where “The animals rise, grateful / & ungrayed,” flora considering synthetic options. Only in a Foret opus does plant life germinate aided by palm plastic (“like a bright thorn began in …

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“Silent Disco”

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The fasten seatbelt lights dinged on. The interactive map reflects 36,000 feet above sea level, ground speed 500mph, actual speed 560 mph. The map rotating between aerial review and cockpit view, the latter a pixelated screen of what passengers might surmise as the dark sky, but with a route that tangents off the Arctic …

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“MIND TRAIN” by Cornelius

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📽️ “Passenger”

Listen to Chad Foret read “Passenger” here:

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Rip Torn is a face without a name. Recognizable in classic movies of the 90s and early-aughts, but his filmography dates back to the 1950s. I taught a language class last semester that utilized pop culture videos to engage students’ active learning skills. The curriculum’s problem though is the video cl…

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Osmanthus originally published this poetry suite on April 21, 2024.

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Perfect crystals exploding into smaller perfect crystals. That’s what the beginning of Anohni’s “Drone Bomb Me” has always sounded like. It’s an illogical, almost arbitrary image that’s similar to the not-quite-metaphysical comparisons that hang together half-established in the song’s opening lyrics:

Love, drone bomb me

Blow m…

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Osmanthus originally published these poems on March 20, 2024.

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Disclaimer: If it can be called a critique, then it’s a critique of generative AI.

A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a tech-podcast about generative AI and its inability to follow precise instructions. The prompt was somewhat incredulous, but nothing too hard for a computer to follow: Write a fifteen word sen…

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