Andrew Duval

Oh no I didn’t know. So sad. My fave: The Better Brown Stories. Cosy, charming metafiction.

Haha this is one thing I teach for evaluating any argument: does the speaker limit their claims, evidence, issue, or anything? No limits = 🚩🚩🚩

It reminds me of that conversation between Levarr Burton and Laurence Fishburne that was floating around a while back, where Burton is like, I’m on their Star Trek and I’m teaching their kids to read and I’m so angry all the time.

I think what’s on my mind is that sensory contrast is so exaggerated that its almost cartoonish, it feels naive, but then the imagery in the stanzas is so much darker, this roiling Bosch-like profusion of details.

The most obvious feature of the poem is the galloping rhythm common to romantic ballads that keeps getting tripped up by these arrhythmic and unrhymed lines that lie across the path like tree roots. The effect is so exaggerated it’s hard for me to focus on anything else.

I’ve never read this poem or heard of the poet. I’m not that across the history of poetry but the theme, diction, rhythm and religiosity make me think it’s late 19th or early 20th century US which makes me think the poet is African American although his name is basically Scottish.

while she says she has moved on, she is still writing this poem.

a very specific context. I feel three punches when I read it: “we’d never been so kind”, “tired of being the one to sum things up” (such a small moment but it momentarily dredges up the wreckage of the marriage), then “when it no longer matters”. That last line reminds you that

This one is heartbreaking. Which then makes it noteworthy that the language is so understated: there are almost no adjectives, the nouns and verbs are not especially vivid or hot, so the language is not straining. Instead the effect is through careful selection of concrete details within

Oh I have a lesson on rewriting ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow’ as an existential complaint about working at a KFC drive-thru. It’s too bonkers to actually use in class but it was fun to write: writelike.org/lessons/writ...

Does it work? Idk. Feels like it would work better for POV of someone who actually says they aren’t into politics, a rambling low-effort incoherent train of thought. Not sure I get it here when it feels like you want to pick images and phrases out?

I think literally sometimes you want the energy of a giant run-on sentence but with the legibility of a poem. We tend to read line breaks as slowing the pace, but in-line slashes literally tilt you from one phrase to the next.

Frankenstories is interesting because it alternates between competition and collaboration. When you’re writing you’re competing, and when you’re voting and building on the winner you’re collaborating.

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a Black father showing his daughter purpleflowered-fingertips and promising to always look after her. (Her unexplained suspicion notwithstanding!)

the loveliness of nature, and “girly” nature at that: flowers and meadows. This is out of my wheelhouse, but when so many people want to depict Black fathers as neglectful and trapped in urban misery (open TwitterX), it’s like a hearing strange kind of war drum to read a poem about

the poem if she spoke, and what she would say. (Kids often speak have accidentally poetic speech.) The second thing that really preoccupies me is more meta: representations of Black fatherhood. Something I love about this poem is that it is a love note from a Black father and his daughter, amidst

Two things jump out at me. The first is the silence of the daughter, and the dialogue of the father (assuming that’s the father speaking). There’s something odd to me that we hear his voice twice (in narration and dialogue) and don’t hear hers. I wonder how it would affect

Arguments like that are always just a form of bullying and intimidation.

relatable (as opposed to straining for effect). I also love it as a possible teaching poem because it plays with language to beautiful effect while still being simple and accessible, and it’s a great example of mythologising everyday experience.

But putting that aside what works for me are all the inventive verb choices and descriptive details, again conjuring the magic of simple moments that are both ephemeral and holy. And the shifting of registers between poetic-sublime and conversational-mundane makes those moments more vivid and

“poetic” with the conversational. I gotta say the ending doesn’t really work for me. It feels like she’s captured the simple sublime of sunsets and winking lights, but couldn’t quite find a bigger idea to add that extra bit of punch so landed on something a little Instagrammy and on the nose.

Ha so I didn’t watch this at first because I misinterpreted spoken word as slam poetry which I tend to find insufferably mannered and whiny. But i read @mnkraft.bsky.social typed version and thought, that’s great! And watching the video, Sarah’s performance is great too, especially in balancing the

It’s like the Rollie Eggmaster but for humans

At a national English teacher function last week and professional dress came up in conversation. People seemed genuinely taken aback when I said I wanted to look like a car mechanic. I tried to explain: writing, craft, mechanics of language, but everyone thought it was some kind of grammar joke 🫠

If you pick any episode from Guy Raz’s podcast The Great Creators, 50/50 chance the guest will talk about improv training as a formative experience.

but also what unifies the paired subjects. For that, the specifics of the hill scene are crucial: the stars may seem impossibly distant and lonely but here she is alone on a cold hilltop at night. Vastly different scales unified by loneliness.

shrunk) before returning to the waltz feel at the end. Re the end, I read the train of thought as, “Wow, the stars are really far away” shifting to “Actually, what *isn’t* far away?” as the poet packs down on the hill. I think it’s always interesting with juxtaposition to notice what is different

amplifies that floating quality, uncommitted. Also I noticed that’s the most metrical line, it’s an iambic trimeter if you take “-ing” as unstressed, which makes me notice that most of the poem has a waltz rhythm except the stanzas on the hill which shrink to two (the way the narrator’s world has