Mightier Than the Sword

Despite the increasingly unambiguous value of arts education in American schools, thanks to scores of studies and surveys in recent years, government funding of arts education, and the arts in general, seems to ignore those established, consequential benefits—not only for students that are directly impacted, but all of society. Read more…

A Conversation With Michael J. Phillips,
Founder and Editor of Bukowski.net

From the moment I read my first Bukowski poem (“so you want to be a writer?”) in my first Bukowski book (“sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way”), I was hooked.

I had never read anything like it, and I wanted more—and more.

Over the next several years, I would buy a new Bukowski book—a collection of poems, columns, stories, letters, essays, or a full-length novel—whenever possible. The sheer volume of his work is matched only by the quality of it all. As my writing partner (who first recommended Bukowski) and I often do during late-night, wine-drinking phone conversations, picking any page number from any collection results in the same reaction: “Wow!” Read more…

There’s no worse feeling for a writer: opening the mailbox to discover an envelope addressed to you, written by you.

The news is never good. There’s no need, really, to even open the damn thing. But you’re a writer, ergo a bit of  a masochist. A voice inside your head whispers, “Hey, you never know.”

So, despite the urge to burn before reading, you rip it open. “Dear Author,” it typically begins, if you’re lucky enough to get that personal of a greeting. The rest of what is usually a short note can be reduced to one disemboweling, blood-soaked word: REJECTED! Read more…

More than a year ago, my wife and I decided to sell our house, and it sold—quickly. So we found an apartment in Asheville, about 30 minutes east of our home for the previous three-and-a-half years. Being that we—plan in mind—thought it a temporary situation, we delivered most of our possessions, save for the essentials (a couple of chairs, a mattress, corkscrew and computer), to three plywood-walled storage units. What had become a fairly extensive personal library—450 volumes or so—would be sheltered from the musty 100-square-foot containers in gray plastic bins and cardboard boxes (see Boxing Up Bukowski, this blog’s forebear).

A writer’s library is a room full of muses.

But the temporary situation, well, evolved; in the meantime a challenge presented itself: finish a book I was co-writing without a little help from my friends (i.e., the spirit and words of the authors of the books that once filled the space in which I wrote). The rich red walls, lined with just enough shelves to accommodate the collection, and a regal-looking cherry wood desk had been replaced by bland white walls, with only a few books stacked on the floor, and a black square card table. Though trying at times during those months, I survived—but not without adding about a hundred new books to that stack on the floor. Read more…