Essays

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Case Study #19: The Case of a Nation Deaf to What It’s Singing About
Case Study #18: The Case of the American Banner Flapping Inside Us All
Jim Burlingame’s Top 10 Favorite Depeche Mode Songs
Case Study #17: The Case of the Valued Disparity
Case Study #16: The Case in Which the Answer Doesn’t Arrive in the End
Jim Burlingame's Top 10 Favorite Nick Cave Songs
Case Study #15: The Case in Which Curves Ahead Means Look at What’s Going On in Our Heads
Case Study #14: The Case of the Two-Faced Cinematic City We Live in Wherever We Are
Case Study #13: The Case of the Essay Begun on Friday the 13th that Happens to Be the 13th in This Series, Because What’s Unlucky Is Equally Lucky When We See Things Right
Case Study #12: The Case of the Twist at the End That's Right Outside Your Window
Case Study #10: The Case of the Half-Known Icon
Case Study #11: The Case of the Centuries-Old Heart Beating in the Zeitgeist of my Youth
Inspiration Case Study #9: The Case of Dad Music Going Back Centuries
Inspiration Case Study #8: The Case in which "Give Up the Thing You Love" Leads to Transcendent Release
Inspiration Case Study #7: The Case of the Director Who Likes It When People are Stuck
Inspiration Case Study #6: The Case for Dwelling on What Might Have Been
Inspirational Case Study #1: The 100 Year Perspective
Inspiration Case Study #2: The Case of How We Unwittingly Contribute So Much to the World
Inspiration Case Study #3: The Case of the Blues Cowboy Calling out to Me
Inspiration Case Study #4: The Case of How We Are Housed in Class Conscious TV and Cinema
Inspiration Case Study #5: The Case of Who Heard Whom in the Wild West End
Songs for a Blue Guitar and the American Sublime [Work in Progress]
Songs for a Blue Guitar and the American Sublime [Work in Progress]
Cinematic Music Goes Down Under: The Jezabels
Cinematic Music Goes Down Under: The Jezabels
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" Is The Ebenezer Scrooge of Holiday Songs
Magic and Capitalism [Excerpt]
The Feminine in Terrence Malick's Films
Masculinity in Wes Anderson's Films

Selected Poems 

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across the shockingly-low late-october flow
it was the spring of 1995
cottonwood fluff is drifting down
topography is a strange concept
massacre
a slow turn to the left
looking in the rear view mirror
light the plane down there
the stormy dark night wrapped across
what you’re doing when you
when I was a young child
when I was seated inside the oddfellows cafe and bar
I had returned to within a block
old haunts along pioneer square blocks at night
loaned/purloined blue t-shirt of mine
here’s to that time
I belong to a facebook group
the loneliness of the downfield goalie
exquisite is a word that shouldn’t be used too often
at dusk in the alley behind your house
a flower drawn on paper
in twelfth grade I flunked my first attempt
say something that makes no sense that captures the spirit of the experience nonetheless
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what this place with no crawl space
the greatest plague is the futile escapism we engage in every day
the first barbed, bass offset, guitar chords
what if instead of new technologies
raking my fingers through
an empty, cracked plastic planter
the way my fingers fit into the loop
are there no new old memories left
Wobble
great pianists somehow
six days ago as I drove
well that was quite the epiphany
sitting across from my
what is your poetry like now
I smell coming outsense
in the basement
suddenly remembering the feel
Silhouetted kids
my heart never closes
here is the author before he is famous
the first barbed, bass offset, guitar chords
it started at the ear
The Department of
Cleaning up in the eternal spin cycle
there’s a wider kind of haiku
as I pulled out of the skateland parking lot
time stabs you like brutus
this is the year that
I made skeletal plans for the evening
the house next to the house
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a star
what can I write
a light to my left
the surface of capitol lake
across the aisle from me in the theater
for a prompt for beginning a poem
a siren's coming down the hill
seeing the snow
just judging his bio on the back flap
can I be among the best of my kind?
sky the color of smoke
every day
I've never let go
it begins with this
the field is below a steep grassy slope
I caught the garter at my sister's wedding
you wake up, somehow, an adult
lying in the bath
upon seeing a river
cat in the construction site
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Featured