The magazine that has replaced the New Yorker in my personal pantheon is the London Review of Books. (And let me acknowledge my undying thanks to Dr. H. Catherine Walter, a fulltime Quantum Mechanic, for turning me on to it a few years back.)

In honor (or honour) of its thirtieth… Read full post »

the frost is on the pumpkin, snow is on the land, rain filleth the firmament and baseball is going to be played in november. this is not a travesty, it is a crime.

the commissioner of the owners of baseball is derelict in his duty at best.  the season started late… Read full post »

"I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am but an attendant lord, one who will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two..."
--T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," 1912

Hamlet wasn't actually much of a Hamlet either.

As a… Read full post »

Just as I was giving up hope, the following email arrived.

Dear Jamie,

I'm very pleased to inform you that the judges in the U of T Magazine Alumni Short Story contest have selected your story "Holiday Justice" for inclusion on the shortlist of five finalists.

Congratulations!

As a result of being short… Read full post »

I entered an unpublished short story, "Holiday Justice," in the University of Toronto Magazine's Alumni Short Story contest. To be eligible you must not have had a book of your short stories published and you must have attended U of T. 

Today they called to tell me it had been… Read full post »

I have finally gotten all my paper-published political writings for the last few years cited on one central webpage. The most recent one was just published, six months since the previous one. The newest, at the top of the list, introduces Sarah Palin to Huey Long, presumably to the… Read full post »

From 1948 to 1976 Fr. Edward Gregory Lee of the Congregation of St. Basil taught Shakespeare, Greek drama, Dante, Chaucer, Romantic poetry and Universal Themes in Literature (Odyssey, Huck Finn, Ulysses) at the University of St. Thomas in Houston TX. He would teach Greek drama in the fall, Shakespea… Read full post »

This is a list of books that materially assisted my understanding of the role of technology in history and vice, of course, versa. The silly editor on Open Salon won't hold the column formatting so, despite my having laboriously inserted spaces, it looks all jumbled. While I do apologize for that,… Read full post »

I have just joined Indiebound.org, an association of independent booksellers who, in one of the many ways in which they are unlike Amazon.com, pay state and local sales taxes to their communities. Check it out to find independent, non-corporate-chain bookstores near you.

This is part nine of a ten-part poem entitled Refilling The Mirrors : The Reciprocity of Stasis, which explores several poetic forms as they control various expressions of emotion.
 

The dots of sweat
On the blue back of your blouse
Between your shoulder blades
Taper down along your spine
From the sh… Read full post »

This entry republishes a short story first seen in the University of Waterloo's literary magazine in 1989. It has since been reworked into becoming the first third of a longer short story that remains, so far, unpublished.

Read full post »

This is an excerpt comprising 1/6 of my otherwise unpublished novella I Don't Know, You Know? The same extract was published in the Georgetown University literary magazine in 1998, when I was a member of the Georgetown University community by virtue of visiting the Psychiatry Department on a weekly b… Read full post »

Just ran across this extremely well-edited and comprehensive film looking at Gene McCarthy, both his political career and his poetry. In honor of what would have been McCarthy's 93rd birthday Sunday, March 29th, here is a description and a link to it.

Sorry I Was Right: Eugene McCarthy

Biographical… Read full post »

this newly-completed chapter from my work in progress, empty away, is not told in the ordinary narrative voice of the piece, but in a special tone, derived as one can plainly see from c.s. lewis' screwtape letters, with i hope 1/1000 of the enjoyment quotient of the original.

CHAPTER 17 – An… Read full post »

A review by James McCarty Yeager

Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia, by Patrick Tracey, Bantam Books, $24.00, ISBN 978-0-55380525-3

WASHINGTON DC: Schizophrenia blighted Boston Irishman Patrick Tracey’s teens and twenties by attacking two of his older si… Read full post »

The curl-tailed cat
At the police station wall
Moused the hole in the pipe
With hope and patience,
Sitting stock-still on the concrete,
Licking her sergeant stripes evenly
In her calico uniform,
Keeping the peace for cat-kind.

_{photo copyright marla b. rosenthal 2007 used by permission}