Today is Father’s Day, and S&R would like to wish a happy one to America’s dads. At the same time, and in the contrary spirit that often typifies what we do around here, I’d like to be the one who acknowledges that our relationships with our fathers are often less than we’d hope for. Frankly, some dads are complete bastards,
Read moreOkay, this is brilliant. I never heard of it until this morning and now I learn that there’s apparently a whole movement afoot, with a project and everything.
Read moreThis one is actually fun. And pretty damned cynical about the world of business and advertising, to boot.
Read moreThis year’s festival was outstanding, but I’ll begin by apologizing. If I had talent and/or a real camera I might do the artists in our annual festival justice. As it is, I’m a schlub with a smart phone camera, so please, imagine how awesome these would be live and in person. Next year we should take up a collection to
Read moreI’ve always felt strongly attuned to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous short story, “Ethan Brand.” The title character forsakes his life to search the world for the unpardonable sin. He finds it. It ends badly for him. The nature of the sin? He remembered with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe,
Read moreIt’s Memorial Day weekend. As we honor our fallen, let’s also reflect on the larger question of war and on the reasons these dead heroes are too often asked to give up their lives. S&R invites our readers to offer their own favorite poems of war and memory. Or stories. Or personal recollections. Whatever. I’ll start. This one, from Yehuda
Read moreEvery movie has a soundtrack. And let’s be honest – most of them are as unmemorable as … well, as the movies themselves. At its best, though, the music captures the spiritual essence of the auteur‘s vision, interacting with the film in ways that are simply transcendent. One plus one equals infinity, and it’s impossible to ever conceive of song
Read moreAnd now, for today’s reading.
Read moreI wrote this maybe 20 years ago and it was published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature in April, 1993. Zen and the Art of Rainfall 1. Out last night, couple of beers with her friends. Yes, her: that one, the one, gone now. Pale sweet ghost, thin blade of lip, profusion of mahogany curl.
Read moreToday is World Poetry Day. We here at S&R appreciate great poetry (we even launched our own literary journal) and we invite you to share with our readers your favorite poem or poet. We’ll go first. Yesterday was the Equinox, and we’re now barreling headlong into longer days and beautiful weather. One of the greatest expressions of natural beauty ever
Read moreScholars & Rogues recently launched the S&R LitJournal in order to promote creative writing in the form of new poetry, fiction and nonfiction. We’ve received and published several works from talented authors and look forward to presenting our readers with more quality original literature in the future. Since some members of our staff are creative writers, we’re familiar with the
Read moreI watched one season of American Idol a few years back out of a combination of boredom and morbid curiosity. It was everything I had imagined and less, a welcome-to-the-Fall-of-Rome extravaganza where everything wrong with popular music, if not American popular culture in general, was frog-marched past the cameras in a weekly parade of cynicism and banality that would have
Read moreI am haunted by numberless islands… – WB Yeats Walking by the shore at dusk, air leaden with a faith in words. William looks up, says Maud, the sky is full of dragonflies. She stares beyond the sea. That’s nice, Bill. But I’ve a kingdom to burn. Your bugs will be dead by morning. Words are a piper, he says.
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lullaby pit 