Author: Brandon Pownall

Like I said in my last post, I am new to Hemingway. I knew going into his short stories to expect examples of strong men but after having read something like 10 of them I cannot get over the way his characters are quite fragmented. For the most part it seems his character uncertain about Continue Reading Read more →

I am ashamed to admit I had never read a line of Hemmingway before this week. His status in American literature goes without saying. Just like when reading Woolf, Duffy, and Danielewski, there is a learning curve to grasping Hemmingway’s prose. All of these authors wrote in the last 100 years and show a primary Continue Reading Read more →

I won’t even attempt to offer a normal English class interpretations for the mass amount of information thrown at me by Mark Z. Danielewski. I just want to know one thing, which character “wrote” House of Leaves? Initially, the text lead me to believe the blind Zampanò authored The Navidson Record, Johnny Truant found it, wrote Continue Reading Read more →

370 pages into Mark Danielewski’s Houes of Leaves, I’m struck by how much of a physical book it is. Almost every feature of the book itself seems to have some sort of meaning. Danielewski takes what are just normal features of a book and uses them to create or add possible meaning to the story. Continue Reading Read more →

370 pages into Mark Danielewski’s Houes of Leaves, I’m struck by how much of a physical book it is. Almost every feature of the book itself seems to have some sort of meaning. Danielewski takes what are just normal features of a book and uses them to create or add possible meaning to the story. Continue Reading Read more →

In my earlier post, “Stealing” Notebooks, I went over what enlightening information I uncovered in MARBL’s collection of Carol Ann Duffy’s notebooks. Along with the Selling Manhattan notebooks, I also looked at The World’s Wife, focusing on the four line poem, “Mrs Darwin”. The World’s Wife notebook was not as content rich as Selling Manhattan, Continue Reading Read more →

I recently visited Emory’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) to view some of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry notebooks. While the collection spans decades of her career, I focused on her Selling Manhattan and The World’s Wife notebooks. This post will cover what I uncovered from notes on the poem “Stealing” from Selling Manhattan. Continue Reading Read more →

Carol Ann Duffy ends her complex poetry collection, Selling Manhattan, with the poem “Miles Away.” I had never really considered it before, but in class we talked about how the arrangement of a poetry collection could be, and most likely is, intentional. Ending on “Miles Away” would make sense, as it explores many themes present Continue Reading Read more →

Reading up to about page 130 of Virginia Woolf’s brilliant Mrs. Dalloway, one pattern seems to unite, or rather interrupt, the thought process of every character: the striking of London’s Big Ben. Besides serving the obvious purpose of marking time, the sound of Big Ben has a real effect on a character’s thoughts and perceptions, Continue Reading Read more →