Essays

Fall 2011

Factory Made for You, and You, and You
by Robin Puskas

There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human being:
the need to make.

We are creatures who need to make.

Because existence is willy-nilly thrust into our hands, our fate is to
make something—if nothing else, the shape cut by the arc of our lives.
—Frank Bidart, Advice to the Players

We're not supposed to love a factory. When we think of factories, we tend to think of unmanned spaces, noisy with the clanging of machines. A factory is a chilly place, and something factory-made is the inverse of a hand made object.

So it's with surprise that I report my love for a blueberry factory.  Read Essay

Heavy Baggage Bound Eastwards
An extract from Facing the Music
by Patrick Henry

Joseph Cotten as writer Holly Martins (left)
and Orson Welles (right) as Harry Lime
in The Third Man (1949).
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Orson_Welles

The terminal for going Eastwards lay closer to the old centre than the one where I came in from Vienna. The brilliant sunlight of Prague had broken into heavy rain, as if gates closing down, saying enough had been revealed to me at the moment, in promise, mystery or menace. The early afternoon turned dark enough for night: a kind of long tunnel to go into for a destination with that heavy name of Cracow.  Read Essay