by Brian Volck | Feb 19, 2020 | Christian Picciolini, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Uncategorized
Last month, in a post on gun violence and the growing understanding of Robert Kennedy, I mentioned the 1963 meeting between Kennedy, James Baldwin, and other civil rights leaders that went disastrously awry. The consequences of that gathering proved varied and...
by Brian Volck | Dec 5, 2019 | Uncategorized
Some thoughts from those wiser than I: “Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal...
by Brian Volck | Nov 15, 2018 | Uncategorized
Here’s a recording of me reading from my 2013 poetry collection, Flesh Becomes Word, published by Dos Madres Press. The accompanying image is shared here courtesy of John Volck, who happens to be my brother and a visual artist of breathtaking ability. The...
by Brian Volck | Dec 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
The power of language can be directed toward many ends. One of these ends is yet another form of power: political control. In egregious cases, language is openly manipulated, degraded, and deformed. Politically-motivated language distortion, however, is rarely so...
by Brian Volck | Dec 27, 2017 | Uncategorized
To call contemporary political discourse “a culture of lies” may be giving politicians, promoters, and pundits too much credit. When words, whether by choice or convention, are detached from shared experience or verifiable reality, speech devolves into amusing games...
by Brian Volck | Dec 26, 2017 | Uncategorized
Words, like quantum particles, will not be pinned down. However meticulously you fix them in the arc of a sentence, they quiver and jump the moment you turn away. They’re fickle and unruly even when you care what – and how – they mean. It’s this quantum uncertainty...
