The sonnet is a neglected form these days.  Verse of all stripes is unpopular — at least under that name, although it still defines popular music.  It’s all in the branding, I suppose.
And current taste often brands the sonnet as precious, artificial, or old-fashioned.  Fair enough; although you could tar most American entertainment genres with the […]

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Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye (1850-1896) was, in his time, a popular humorist, both as journalist and lecturer.  He’s not much read now, but I suggest that he’s still worth a look.  Here, for example, is a slice from an essay on the future.  Edison, by the way, was indeed working on a thought-recording machine.
“In fact, Mr. Edison […]

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is an Abolitionist—
A man who wants to free
The wretched slave—and give to all
An equal liberty.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY ALPHABET
Alphabets usually have a not-so-hidden agenda, aiming to do more than reinforce rather arbitrary connections between the names of letters and the words that demonstrate their forms and sounds.
Some alphabets teach the names of animals or common objects. […]

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We have for you another outpost on the extremes of literature, another specimen of the radically long or brief.  This one is on the short side.
The output of the Italian Futurists is uneven: sometimes exuberantly imaginative, sometimes merely creepy and jejune (especially when the fascist strain predominates).  But I usually enjoy the sintesi: bits of theater […]

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JOHN COOPER.

John Cooper was a little boy, whose father and mother lived in a cottage on one side of a village green. He was his parents’ only child, so that he had no brothers nor sisters to play with. But he had a dog of which he was very fond, and he used sometimes to play with other children on the green. Tom Jones was one of the boys that played with John Cooper. One day he asked John Cooper to go for a long walk with him, instead of going to school. John at first would not consent, but at last he gave way and went with Tom, taking Carlo with him.

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There is a wonderful variety of short literary forms: limericks, quatrains, haiku, couplets, epigrams, anecdotes, jokes, riddles, parables, fables, proverbs, maxims, blackouts, slogans, and on and on. Some are simply passing thoughts; others pack as much meaning as possible into the smallest space.
Here, we’ll trot out the one-word poem — to be specific, the one-word […]

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As an addendum to our toast to La Seine, I offer this sketch of the grave of Raymond Roussel, which I did on one of my visits there (yes, I went more than once).
Fittingly, the exterior is formal, the beauties hidden. Roussel was a chess buff. He therefore designed a mausoleum containing 32 […]

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We here at the Ullage Group are intrigued by the extremes of literature. For that reason, we’ll occasionally raise a toast to an exceptional example. In this series, those will be works that are unusually short or long.
The long poem is an unpopular form these days. Long movies and TV serials do […]

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(We conclude here a short story by Paul Vibert, translated by Doug Skinner.)
I can repeat the celebrated procedure of the rats’ father, a prosthetic graft, and so join together two elephants, or two whales; then, when the graft has taken, all I need do is cut a small incision for communication; and as I […]

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(We present here the second part of a short story by Paul Vibert, translated by Doug Skinner. Please read the first part for your greater enjoyment.)
Obviously, there can be no question of a spacious apartment, but simply a small lodging, warm and convenient. It could be relocated at will; and man would thus […]

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