Tag Archives: Rain Taxi Rewind 2016

Our Writers, Our Alcoholics

In nearly every context, being an alcoholic is considered a bad thing. This is not news. But when it comes to creative fields, especially writing, the term often starts to gather connotations that are far less negative; we can still look at it as “bad,” but there’s no question that we romanticize the alcoholic writer. […]

Back to Reality

When you make your living working with fiction, every now and then you start to crave something “real.” It’s a deeper feeling than one that’s fixed by a simple switch to reading nonfiction for a while; it’s got more to do with the task itself, the editing, the reading, the beginning with a story and […]

The Necessity of War Poems

For most of us, war exists in our minds as something far away. We hear things, terrible things, but they’re always secondhand, diluted by geography and reporting and the simple fact that for over a decade now, our country has been vaguely and continually “at war.” It’s no longer new, to the point that it’s […]

Videogames: Art or Not?

Unless you were on your ninth straight hour of bingeing the newest Harry Potter book your parents probably didn’t need to demand that you put a book down and do something worthwhile. Reading, we can all agree, is worthwhile; it’s a direct interaction with a piece of art, or an entry point to new ideas […]

Bad Behavior

Here’s a question the public typically reserves for our pop artists and athletes: how do we expect our writers to behave? My initial answer would have been, well, nothing; I don’t look for anything from a writer outside of his or her work. But just as this isn’t true when Americans talk about rap stars […]

The Post-Racial Myth

“When the president of the most powerful country in the world doesn’t need to care what the facts are, then we can be sure we have entered the Age of Empire.” This is Arundhati Roy, as quoted in a 2014 Rain Taxi review of Joseph Hutchison’s poetry collection Marked Men. The “facts,” as they relate […]

The Many Faces of Russia

It’s never been simple for Americans to picture Russia. One second we’re thinking of it warmly as a key ally in the Second World War, and an instant later it’s the frosty enemy in the Cold War. The Soviets are the opposing team in our country’s sports contest, the bad guys in our favorite spy […]

Keep the End Times Rollin’

Here’s a word that’s both specific and open-ended at once: apocalypse. A vast majority of people from all walks of life agree that, at some point, the world as we know it will end. It’s a concept embedded into our religious imagery, our political hyperbole, and our art, and as we learn increasingly more about […]

2010: A Midwest State of Mind

Quick: where do writers live? Many people when faced with that question envision New York City. The thought conjures images of lofts on the Lower East Side, or some studio apartment in Brooklyn, or (as the writer you’re picturing gets richer) a desk in front of a window overlooking the Park. Another answer could be […]

2002: The Everything Fight

In a presidential election cycle that has been wild and controversial, something really unexpected just happened, and in the window of time before candidates, parties, and pundits could come up with their practiced talking points on it, we got an unfiltered look at many of the true fears, motivations, and stances underpinning this election and […]