Shifting positions and perceptions in a weary world at a Walt Whitman Poetry Contest in Camden, New Jersey
“Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns.”- Walt Whitman
As a teacher, I’m not used to being tested. And I’m definitely not familiar with failing. …
The life and times of Walter Bowne at…
Fiction
Freedoms often collide, creating accidental martyrs in modern American
Readers please note: this fictional story includes a description of sexual assault.
The kids were returning to school when we heard the news. The Philadelphia Inquirer called him Socrates of Rittenhouse Square. For us, that front-page story has been our everyday story. …
Never listen to rock and roll lyrics
I did everything to impress women except speaking to them. Between the ages of 3 and 24, I was a disaster with women. Why should such disasters still haunt me now at 51?
There was one girl who lived around the corner. Let’s call her Juliet. I don’t know what…
The Appeal and the Tragedy of the South
What makes the South so fond of its past?
To understand a Southerner’s fondness for monuments and say, the rebel flag, it is essential to understand its culture through its rich literary history. Leafing through such pages will not excuse racism or intolerance or xenophobia, but at least it may help us understand.
Every September in AP Language and…
Call out buffoons with sound logic and don’t write like a Yahoo
Hey everyone! Walter ‘Down with Bowne’ here — talking — er — writing about logical fallacies
That just means errors in logic and reasoning. Or “Junk Cognition.”
For example, let’s just say that you feel smoking cigarettes is fine because your Uncle Joe Bobby John lived to be 98, and he enjoyed a pack of Camels every day.
That’s great! But the one does not prove…
OPEN LETTERS
Here are a few other book suggestions other than rereading our beloved prophet for the hundredth time
Dear Ayn Rand, Neo-Conservative, Neo-Libertarian, and Former Tea Party Readers,
I know we have all read Ayn Rand. We love Ayn Rand. However, it would be myopic to only read a handful of books that cater to our message. It’s akin to having a severe case of ‘monobibliosis ‘— basing a belief system on One Book.
Here are several classics…
Let me correct the errors of English teachers everywhere
Hello, scholars! And fans of literature! Walter “Down with Bowne” here
We’re gonna be talking about Transcendentalism, an offshoot of Romanticism. It’s still in the same vein, part of the same tree — just a really big and influential limb, let’s say.
Get your handy-dandy notebooks out! A quiz — I promise — will not follow.
We have for the All-Stars…
A Ghost Story: Part II
Part I:
Part II:
First, the sound of an oncoming train.
That sound of the train moaning as it slows down, squeaks and screeches around the curve, hitting the darkness of the underground tunnel. The brakes groan. …
A Ghost Story: Part I
Among the things that Roderick “Rory” Radcliffe bequeathed me was a legacy of nightmares. Roderick had always been the clarity the world needed to expose the hidden or the rotten.
No one knew, then, what Roderick himself was hiding nor what he saw that no one else saw. …
