On The Virtues Of Distrust

An Interview With Andrei Codrescu

I wouldn’t call it [my world view] cynical, I would go beyond that. I would call it a total distrust of all the cherished notions we have of progress and history — and that’s a Balkan characteristic. We can’t believe that things are going to get better, because we know from our history that they never do.

Commentaries

When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered: “An explorer!” It was quite the thing for a boy of ten, but imagine being stuck with it. Fashions change but one thing does not: all adults want little boys to be something else besides little boys.

Writing Down The Bones

Freeing The Writer Within

Writing is not psychology. We do not talk “about” feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader’s hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.

Ruminations

Memory is housed safely in its skull studio, where it can play, replay, edit, splice, erase, make louder or softer anything not in this room. Memory is here to paint the room when I least notice it happening.

Aliens In The Garden

In the fields you worked in the open sun, sweating like a mule, crawling down the rows on your knees, your back bent and your spine cracking, breathing dust and insecticide fumes.

The Wizard

I knew old Wiggins years before he scandalized the area newspapers, because he was part of my childhood, like the pine tree with the tire swing and the forbidden, ancient barn I explored in secret.

Sadly This Clay

Signs

Selected Poems