Miscellany: Chinese Moon Goddess

          Smashing Pumpkins’ music video (photo on right) of “Tonight, Tonight” gives a nod to that early horror/ sci fi moving-picture innovator (photo on left). The poet Zhang Er, one moonless night—while we were watching the 1902 film Le...

Pins & Needles No. 36: Richard Siken

No. 36: Richard Siken Q. Let’s get a little metaphysical. At the end of your poem, “The Story of the Moon,” you write “one wonders why a story like this exists.” Why do you think stories exist in general, let alone this one? Stories are the way we pass along...

Pins & Needles No. 35: Sequoia Nagamatsu

No. 35: Sequoia Nagamatsu Q. How do you see names, and giving names to things, working in your story, considering most of the things given formal names are actually dead, or not yet living? Names make the dead, the formless tangible. In naming the seeds, Momotaro’s...