Waywords Studio
Wanderings on Literature and Language
Waywords
our studio
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
Martin Heidegger, “Poetry, Language, Thought”
Waywords produces a web of programs and media designed to improve our thinking in democratic action, in critical literacy, in global understanding. We provoke, inspire, and wrestle with the ambiguities and richness of human thinking, from times modern to ancient.
While offering serious educational support for those who want it, Waywords entertains and engages with surprising takes on a wide range of global topics, from Western social trends to modern mythological thinking.
Criticism
The Waywords podcast and blog explore the workings of global literatures, language, and mythology through a social-epistemic rhetoric.
Fiction
Original prose includes short fiction, work from the ImageMaker cosmogony, the Sam & Nadi English learners series, and audio drama.
Teaching
Programs to support students in lifelong literacy training, Advanced Placement® Literature, IB® Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, and English language learning.
Lessons from Emilio
In the image, he is on the Inca Trail, alone, a floppy hat and sunglasses, his hands resting on the top of his walking stick as he waits for me to reach him. I am wheezing from altitude dizziness as we ascend.
Lata
It was the only teaching he thought he understood. The others (admit it, admit it!) had escaped him entirely. Furenthe was what he would always be. Apprentice. Lata the Furenthe. Furenthe Imagemaker.
Nazgul
After all, I was maybe 15 years old, skinny and pale as pasta, my “Lord of Chaos” badge hanging crookedly from a fading Dragonslayer t-shirt. And there was Gandalf, a 280 pound beer-stinking sasquatch of a man …
Wedding Poem
(with no apologies to lyn lifshin, once our country’s most published poet)
The Challenge of Finding Wisdom
I have seen years and scores of students succumb to the allure of Beavis and Butthead and Seattle grunge, Instagram and “What Does the Fox Say?”, never suspecting that Descartes’ dualism or Conrad’s “The horror” could be significant moments for true reflection.
To the Tower
I’ve always found power in creating story; it’s my way of creating the space I wish to inhabit.
Doing Battell
I suppose accepting the importance of internal conflict is difficult for any American boy. After all, I was taught to be strong. To write “reflectively” about “feelings” was, in 1978, a girlie thing to do.
Answering Machine
I tell her that the machine hates her.
And with all sobriety she says, I know it does.
Thumbing the Bird
Fortunately, as I have found in most places I’ve visited, people are forgiving. At least they were more forgiving than myself, who could not–for years–believe he had made such a mistake.
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