writing | ZETEO

Bach, God, Fervor, the Devil

February 14, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I returned last night from a concert that featured, among other things, two movements from Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. By pure luck, I had been reading an essay by Edward Said on Bach’s life and work. Bach cavorts with immortality. As my exposure to the cello suites confirmed once more, Bach’s work is inexhaustible in its energy and in its inspiration. Its boundless innovation can — and is — rendered in ever fresh ways. With discrete elision, I might […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, literature, philosophy, women, writing

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Big Science, Big Art

January 31, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I was startled to read in yesterday’s Boston Globe that a scholarly paper on “the God particle” (the Higgs boson) had 5,154 authors. I wondered if they hired a stadium for the signing and celebration. I usually think of science as dancing with poetry. An odd couple, you’ll say, but I’ve learned from Thoreau that they don’t have to stay off the dance floor, or only glower at each other. But here, in this headline about the “God particle,” I […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, philosophy, technology, writing

Leviathans, Apocalypse, Woolf, Melville

January 24, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I’m not sure what led me to open Moby Dick again. It’s become a book to browse rather than “get through.” And when a passage pops up, one can’t be in a rush. Going slowly I can unravel serpentine sentences that so often deliver gold. Why just now? Perhaps because I’ve moved to the seacoast where even square-riggers come into port come summer, and I have time for reverie. By coincidence, passages from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse were lingering […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: literature, love, Thoreau, writing

Listening, Stillness, Inaction

January 17, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I have a friend who has published an award-winning book of poems titled “Having Listened.” He writes in the shadow of Boston, near the Arnold Arboretum, designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted. We walked there recently, a patrician park overseen by Harvard University. It has no end of whispering trees and rolling paths. It’s quiet; it’s easy to listen. My friend listens there as we walk, taking a break from non-stop Christmas festivities. But his listening didn’t begin in […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiLL • Tags: love, philosophy, poetry, writing

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Lynch Mobs

January 3, 2016 by fritztucker

Shortly after posting my previous week’s article about Donald Trump, fascism, and communal violence, the New York Times published footage of a woman being lynched in Kabul, Afghanistan. The preceding disclaimer did not prepare me for the video’s contents; though I can’t think of anything that would have. It was definitely the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t necessarily recommend the reader watch it. I would recommend it, however, for those who genuinely think that Trump’s followers are in danger […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: African-Americans, books, crime, death, History, literature, Marx, New York Times, politics, race, reading, writing

Dancing with Woolf, Treading with Eliot

December 27, 2015 by Ed Mooney

♦ What would happen if God leaned down and gave you a full, wet kiss? — Daniel Ladinsky Some words, like people, move us before we’re really aware of what’s happening. We return the glance from across the room instantaneously, spontaneously. Sometimes words are like that, a contagious spark. We dance in the space of words and things worded. A quickness of phrase or movement will quicken an alert return. The glance and spark not just of looks […]

Categories: Ed Mooney • Tags: death, philosophy, poetry, women, writing

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Porn, then Poetry

December 11, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Of course, [pornography and poetry] probably benefit [from the Internet] for different reasons: pornography because people really want it a lot but are embarrassed to go get it in person; poetry because people don’t want it that much, so it helps if they can get it for free without ever even leaving their desk chairs. This excerpt was taken from an article that appeared in the AGNI blog titled “Wherever, However: Poetry Pornography and the Internet,” written by David Ebenbach. Ebenbach has […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: poetry, pornography, reading, writing

Playwriting: Churchill “Cloud Nine”

October 6, 2015 by William Eaton

Martin (to his wife): So I lost my erection last night not because I’m not prepared to talk, it’s just that taking in technical information is a different part of the brain and also I don’t like to feel that you do it better to yourself. I have read the Hite report. I do know that women have to learn to get their pleasure despite our clumsy attempts at expressing undying devotion and ecstasy, and that what we spent our […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: comedy, playwriting, sexuality, theater, writing

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A Sudden Collapse of Ice

September 15, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Poems can sometimes behave like short stories, like very short stories. They set the scene, bring the reader in and then leave them with an uncertain longing. In just fifteen lines, the poem below tells the story of two couples, of neighbors, of marriage, of winter. The title lets the reader know what to expect from the very beginning: there is to be a crossing over to an intimate landscape for a chilling view of the life of others. Chilling, perhaps, […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, poetry, reading, writing