Tag Archives: Night of the Living Dead

Do Copycats Make Better Art?

Years ago at an artists’ retreat in the Adirondacks I met a young painter who found his source material in crowd photographs from magazines. Tracing the heads and shoulders gave him patterns for abstract paintings that retained the ghostly suggestion … Continue reading

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Zombies Invade National Poetry Month on WAMC

Every so often, Stuart Bartow appears with Paul Elisha and others on WAMC’s Vox Pop radio call-in show to read poems. To begin their April program for National Poetry Month, Stu read my poem, “Why I Love Zombies.” You’ll hear … Continue reading

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Love in the City of Grudges, Reviewed by Bruce Weber

(Here’s Bruce Weber’s review from the Winter 2011/2012 issue of Home Planet News. Thanks, Bruce!) Will Nixon’s second book of poetry, Love in the City of Grudges, returns to the fertile, dysfunctional family territory of his first collection My Late … Continue reading

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How I Wrote “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse”

In the early 1990s, I wrote my first poems on a whim one weekend at a Zen monastery in the western Catskills. At the time I lived in Manhattan with my wife, worked at a small environmental magazine, and didn’t … Continue reading

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“Read Local”: My Holiday Appeal

Among the nicest gifts I received this year were two heartfelt appraisals of my poetry books by Marc Schuster of Small Press Reviews. Many critics love to show off their smarts, but not so many share their real feelings as … Continue reading

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Are Poetry Books Cursed?

To curse your book print “Poems” on the cover. I kid you not. At flea markets and library fairs I’ve displayed copies of Walking Woodstock and Love in the City of Grudges side by side, and I’ve watched people’s eyes … Continue reading

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Zombies and 9/11

Among the most perceptive things I’ve learned from my Night of the Living Dead studies is that director George Romero was a 1950s teenage fan of E.C. Comics, which featured graphic horror stories until U.S. Senate hearings in 1954 forced … Continue reading

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Zombie PhD, thanks to Bobbi Katz

Among the many witty and endearing details of Bobbi Katz’s book for the child in all of us, The Monsterologist: A Memoir in Rhyme, is one that nobody but me seems to have noticed. First, give Bobbi her due. The … Continue reading

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The Nude Zombie You’ll Never Forget

At first, the young filmmakers shooting Night of the Living Dead wanted to keep their terror pure. Neither the survivors in a farmhouse boarded up in defense against the ghouls out on the lawn nor the audience would know what … Continue reading

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Matthew J. Spireng’s “What Focus Is”

Years ago, the answering machine message was an art form in itself, an opportunity to be witty, creative, the star of your own little ten second show. My all-time best? “We ain’t got time for no fancy message rhyme. So … Continue reading

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