Beyond Metaphor: On Prose by Chris Campanioni & Elizabeth Powell

By Kristina Marie Darling

MAR 2019 | Books

In his book The Dialogic Imagination, M. M. Bakhtin observes that “the poetic symbol presupposes the unity of a voice with which it is identical, and presupposes that such a voice is completely alone within its own discourse.

Brandon Ndife: MY ZONE

By Avram C. Alpert

JUNE 2020 | ArtSeen

Even as it feels like a representation for the mass decay we experience, it is also, if only accidentally, a preservation of a time when decay still felt like a metaphor or imaginative exercise.

Deborah Levy’s Real Estate

By Elizabeth Block

OCT 2021 | Books

What kind of “feminist” would rather be labeled, according to real estate terminology, as “chattel real,” rather than flipping that metaphor literally to “lord of the land?” With all the privileges and advantages real estate offers for wealth building, why just daydream about it if one has book advances and award money to buy a little security? These are questions inevitably raised, but not resolved, in Deborah Levy’s third book in a contemplative memoir series, Real Estate.

I Run My Hand Over the Race

By Taney Roniger

JUNE 2020 | Critics Page

The words in my title belong to Robert Irwin. I came across them years ago in Lawrence Weschler’s much-loved book of dialogues with the artist, and since then they’ve become something of a personal shibboleth. Referring to his technique for placing bets at the track (a second vocation in which he enjoyed great success), Irwin relayed that, after carefully studying the statistics for each horse, he would forget all the facts, close his eyes, and “run his hand over the race.” I don’t think I’ve encountered a better metaphor for tacit thinking: the kind of thinking we do unconsciously, without language, with and through our bodies.