Short essay in Like the Wind magazine

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My favorite sports magazines have always been those written, edited, and published by a community that truly loves their sport. For mountain biking, it was Dirt Rag magazine. As a runner, I subscribe to several, but I always spend the most time, per issue, with Like the Wind. It publishes the most authentic stories from runners who put to words their passion for everything from marathon training to race day to the daily standards. Each issue is a carefully gathered collection of stories from around the world, all focusing on why we love to run. I’m honored to have a short essay in issue #49, which is landing in subscribers’ mailboxes this week. Part philosophical reflection, part attempt to transcend the mental – “Colluvium” is my shot at why running’s so great. If you’re not already a subscriber to Like the Wind, you can fix that here.

Desert Landscapes

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While in graduate school, I wrote a little thing about nothing. I am not sure if this is a prose poem or a story or an essay, but whatever it is, the cross-genre journal Espacio Fronterizo found room for it in their November 2023 publications. Thanks to the editors for giving “Desert Landscapes” a home.

When you see a train, you see the whole miles-long train of hoppers and tankers and engines, you see it all at once, all in one look off to the side. It is far away, but nothing keeps you from seeing it all at once because there is nothing out there. 

Displacement Activities

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Moss, a literary journal of poetry from the Pacific Northwest, published one of my poems last summer. It appeared in a beautifully bound issue, packed full of great poems and short stories by other PNW writers. I appreciated the chance to see my work alongside theirs and to learn about so many new PNW poets. Last week, the editor wrote to share the link to Displacement Activities‘ online venue – which he called Fresh Moss. It’s the greeney season.

Interview on narrative theory

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What makes someone the same person over time?

This is the question that Teaching Predoctoral Fellow Phillip Barron hopes to answer in his first year in the Lewis & Clark philosophy department. Having completed the necessary coursework at the University of Connecticut, he is now at LC working on the first year of a two-year predoctoral fellowship, and currently teaching PHIL 217: Conceptions of Selfhood and Personal Identity. In his Ph.D. dissertation, he hopes to give a new perspective of the idea of personal identity through narrative theory.

“(Narrative theorists) are people who say that an essential part of your identity revolves around the stories that you tell about yourself,” Barron said. “My argument is that narrative theory is … the only (theory) that can say, ‘This is why psychological continuity matters, this is why bodily continuity matters.’” 

Read the rest of the interview/profile at the Pioneer Log, the student-run newspaper at Lewis & Clark College.

Photo by Jo Tabacek

Nicolás Guillén Book Award

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In June, I had the surprise honor of picking up a book award. I learned about six months before then that What Comes from a Thing was chosen by the Caribbean Philosophical Association to receive an annual award for contributions to philosophical literature.

Even more humbling than the award itself was sharing the stage with Kamau Brathwaite, Robin D.G. Kelley, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and fellow San Francisco State alum, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

By way of invocation, I read “The Problem of History” (below) as well as “Who’s Afraid of Franz Kafka,” is by Ángel Escobar.

Las Meninas in Aesthetics for Birds

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The latest in my obsession with Las Meninas is up at Aesthetics for Birds, the philosophy and art website. It’s a short piece about the enigmatic painting, restricted by design to only 100 words. The tight limit provides the kind of challenge that appeals to me as a poet and as someone who writes philosophy about art. One ought to be able to say something meaningful in so little space.  

Las Meninas– https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2018/10/26/100-philosophers-100-artworks-100-words-69/

Check out all of their 100x100x100 series. One hundred works of art, written about by 100 philosophers, using only 100 words each. It’s not just paintings; there are entries on film, sculpture, poetry, conceptual art, photography, and some that defy categorization. 

All 100x100x100 – https://aestheticsforbirds.com/category/100-x-100-x-100/

A favorite of mine, pulled from the long list, is Joshua Hall’s reading of Mark Strand’s poem, in which Hall sees a distillation of Simone De Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.  https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2016/11/11/100-philosophers-100-artworks-100-words-58/

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez, 1656 (Prado)

Podcast discussion on poetic meaning, philosophy of poetry

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My friend and colleague Cody Turner really digs podcasts. He listens to them, recommends them, and even started his own. His Tent Talks are wide-ranging conversations on everything from what psychedelics can tell us about consciousness to truth models in philosophical logic. This past week, Cody had me on the show to talk about my work in poetry and philosophy. I’m grateful to Cody for doing such a close reading of my current work in philosophy of language, on the topic of poetic meaning. Like any piece of writing, I learn just as much about what I have written by talking with someone else about how they interpreted my text. 

It’s a long discussion (2:40:25), so here’s a breakdown. The episode opens with general questions about, what he calls, my intellectual history, which I interpret as, how I ended up here. At 36:52, he asks me whether I consider myself to be a poet or philosopher primarily. At 40:44, he then leads us into a close reading and discussion of my claims about the relationship between personal significance and semantic meaning, specifically how poetry blurs the distinction between them. Finally, at 1:30:50, Cody reads some of his favorite poems from my book, What Comes from a Thing, and we talk about the joy and difficulty of writing, reading, and interpreting poetry.

You can also download the episode from iTunes, under Podcasts, here. 

Or, you can check out the full range of his podcasts at his website, codyturnercreations.com