On The Seawall
Online/Digital
On The Seawall is a community gallery for new writing and commentary during a time of emergency. (There always is, and there always has been, an emergency.)
I launched On The Seawall in 2007 as a site for my personal page and occasional comment, but as my involvement with commentary grew along with the size of the site’s readership, On The Seawall soon evolved into a regularly refreshed book review site. In the spring of 2018, as the old and unfixable code underlying the site began to break down, I considered three options: shut down, rebuild On The Seawall as it stands, or apply the resource and direct the site’s audience to a broader purpose. After discussing the potential with my friends, I decided to relaunch On The Seawall to accommodate diverse commentary, new writing across genres, and art. In particular, the site presents and discusses poetry, lyrical and speculative fiction, literature in translation, and cultural expression via essays and reviews. Source
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Media Outlet details
| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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| Frequency | Weekly |
| Days Published | Tue |
Recent Articles
Search ArticlesOn the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
What can we learn from a novel’s epigraph? Avigayl Sharp’s Offseason begins with two. One is from Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, an appropriate choice for a novel whose protagonist has a fraught relationship with her own therapist. But it’s the quote that precedes it that feels like a challenge has been accepted. That’s because it’s from Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, one of the defining novels of teachers and students written in the last century.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Criminal Behavior 1 In the beginning, the fatal beating is just a local news story. A curiosity to follow. Terrible behavior reported in a newspaper circulated through small towns and rural communities within an hour’s drive. Alleged, the articles always acknowledge, when the names and actions of the two men who are about to stand trial for murder seventeen years after the killing occurred are mentioned.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Few documents have been scrutinized more than our Declaration of Independence, with particular attention lavished on the truth that all men are created equal.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
“Call Every Resource”: Muriel Rukeyser in the Twenty-First Century with Catherine Gander and Stefania Heim In a series of lectures delivered at American colleges in the 1940s, later adapted and published as The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser developed a defense of poetry as the cultural form best suited to respond to conditions of crisis.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Ecce Homo Through a small opening in the antique curtains, a cleft with scalloped edges among the embroidered frills, she spied a scampering act of frolicsome murder. She was a young woman, although most things about her were like the curtains, unrepentantly outmoded and obsolete.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Restanza The most vivid memory I have of the summer I left home is of my mother. She is in the kitchen, brightly lit by the August sun. Wearing a white cover-up, she’s cutting the sausage links with mournful meticulousness, sniffling as she slips each portion into a freezer bag. Despite the heat, she had spent hours ironing clothes that would wrinkle again during the long journey and showing me how to cook this and that at the stove.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
In 1948, the prestigious Argentine literary journal Sur serialized Silvina Ocampo’s novella El Impostor, in which a young man named Luis strives to befriend 18-year old Armando. Armando’s father has secretly sent Luis to determine why his son has isolated himself on the family’s rundown estate southwest of Buenos Aires, but while the fear is that Armando is heartbroken or battling addiction, the truth and its consequences are much darker.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Mother’s Day Still I struggle to rise, breathing in the quiet, trying to believe in patience as I teach the child to make the bread, to mix the flour and water, feed the starter so the yeast can grow, keep going even days after it’s been fed.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Part way through The Old Fire, a young woman is abandoned. Dressed in a sweater woven with pearls, a tulle skirt and amber necklace, the narrator, Agathe, waits over an hour for friends who never arrive.
On the Seawall a community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate
Beginning Even what I didn’t have was what I had — I said that, trying to believe myself When I say myself I mean us because those were days when we were never found and yet we didn’t hear a voice or at last listen to what must be ourselves and so I don’t think I can begin again in the way I was always beginning then cutting through the forest of thorns or is that too melodramatic cutting through a patch of thistles for thistles thrive on neglect and their nectar is exquisite to certain bees...