Waywords Studio
Wanderings on Literature and Language
Waywords
our studio
“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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 & Reviews
The Waywords podcast and blog explore the workings of global literatures, language, and mythology through a social-epistemic rhetoric. Book reviews explore a wide range of genre, era, and region.
Fiction & Verse
Original prose includes short fiction, work from the ImageMaker cosmogony, the Sam & Nadi English learners series, published collections like Unwoven, and audio drama.
Teaching & Learning
Programs to support students in lifelong literacy training, Advanced Placement® Literature, IB® Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, and English language learning.
Kurt Vonnegut: “A Man Without a Country”
Vonnegut’s sardonic charm and open-handed critical wit are turned all the way up in this brief collection of short essays and observations, personal curiosities and writing advice. Worth the stay!
From Chevy to Ford
“Okay. Well, I’m just gonna say that your popular media inspired me to a new level of decadence. I mean, I’m like a Darkseid MMA version of the WWE. You know the word ‘turpitude?’”
Edith Wharton: “Summer”
Wharton’s hotter take on Ethan Frome is also far more nuanced, with a resolution worthy of much debate.
William Covino: “Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy”
Covino’s thoughtful overview of the history of rhetoric does more than merely parallel empiricism’s relationship with magical thinking; it reveals blind spots in the awareness of each.
You- A Shadorma
More poetic forms that did not appear in Unwoven. Here is a brief shadorma, an older poem from Spain, here transplanted to a Michigan September.
Aleksandar Hemon: “The Lazarus Effect”
Hemon’s tight crafting of sentence and omissions is a slow burn opening into history, politics, and identity, obscure and satisfying.
Camille Paglia: “Glittering Images”
Informative, brief, and too-safe book by the otherwise witty and insightful Paglia. Did I expect too much?
Unwoven: Book Launch Sept 17! You’re Invited!
Unwoven, Waywords Studio first book of poetry, launches Sept 17 on YouTube! Unique prizes and opportunities, available from Sept 17-18 in all time zones!
Joseph Campbell: “Sake & Satori”
Campbell’s sometimes quaint, sometimes uncomfortable musings on his daily travels across East Asia is definitely for fans: it lacks any substantive looks at his own life or the mythological thinking he will develop later. But great for some formative insights!
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