Posts by: Alison Moncrief
I’ve recently received the four volume set of The Paris Review Interviews. These books, colorful inside and out, are a pleasure to look through and laugh or cringe at the pith and wit of the 20th century’s best writers. Here are some noteworthy excerpts from my morning skim:
Interviewer: Are there any authors you’d like [...]
Continue Reading →We are getting mail in droves. We aren’t getting holiday cards, we’re getting catalogues, by the dozens. The people who lived here before us were certainly eclectic-Parts-Unlimited Snowmobile Catalogue, Orvis, and my recent study: the seemingly innocuous J.Crew glossies.
It didn’t take a very long or discriminating glance through a few catalogues to notice something [...]
Continue Reading →The other day, I woke to the radio reporting, “Lung stolen from Peru exhibition of human cadavers.” And then later that morning, I read Leslie Adrienne Miller’s fifth collection of poems, The Resurrection Trade and the missing lung in Peru began to make more sense.
The collection of poems knocked my socks off. It left [...]
Continue Reading →I was hankering for a good adventure movie the other night- something 18th century and swashbuckling. I stumbled upon The Red Tent, on the cover: a tattered crew huddled in a wreck in the middle of an Arctic landscape-and a headshot of Sean Connery. I was sold.
What Andy and I settled down to watch [...]
Continue Reading →(Relatively) jobless as I am, I've decided to audit a Latin class at UVM. One week in, and there is no doubt that learning Latin is hard work. But it also feels like entering a Fairy Kingdom; the first verb we learn and conjugate is Laudare- To Praise!
Lately, I’ve been snooping around 18th century [...]
Continue Reading →Silence is all we dread.
There's Ransom in a Voice --
But Silence is Infinity.
Himself have not a face.
-Emily Dickinson
Andy and I have been driving from Burlington, Vermont and back to New Haven a lot lately. Headed north from New Haven, the rise of New England and her green [...]
Continue Reading →At the beach this week, my friend was reading Music for Torching by A.M. Homes. After the novel, she couldn't get her dramatic internal monologue to turn off. She confessed the novel left her narrating her life with a similar sort of agonizing ennui. She said it was something like:
“Okay, it’s time for dinner.” [...]
Continue Reading →I recently heard that one of my old students fell into a conversation in which my name was brought up. Apparently, he really split everyone’s sides by recalling, “Ms. Moncrief totally has an unhealthy obsession with Walt Whitman!” And that was all he remembered, and all he had to say of the eighth grade.
This [...]
Continue Reading →My friend Molly and I were strolling through East Rock Park last Saturday morning. Not unlike the joggers and the church picnickers, we were thinking about life and what it felt like to live it on that sunny morning. We were happily yammering away when in the middle of the path, in broad daylight, unmoving [...]
Continue Reading →When I saw Louis Menand's "Show or Tell: Should Creative Writing be Taught" in this week's New Yorker, I cringed, sighed, and devoured the article right at the kitchen table. As one of the many MFAs and teachers of Creative Writing, I am intimately and darkly interested in this topic.
Turns out, Menand's piece is [...]
Continue Reading →Archive
Tags
adaptations Athol Fugard book reviews books Charles Douthat Devin Brain Don Barkin fiction Film Reviews Gordon Edelstein gregory feeley issue #4 Issue 3 Kehler Liddell Gallery Lee Sandlin Letter Writing Lileana Blain-Cruz Listen Here Literary Criticism Literature Long Wharf Theater memoir music Musical Theater New Haven New Haven Review New Haven Theater Company Non-fiction poetry Public Readings Rudolph Delson science fiction Shirley Jackson short stories theater Theater Review Theater Reviews The Dirty Pond The Yale Cabaret William Shakespeare Writing Yale Cabaret Yale Repertory Theater Yale School of Drama Yale Summer Cabaret Shakespeare Festival
Recent Comments