30 Nights
What is this?
Ray Bradbury advised aspiring writers to read one poem, one essay, and one short story every night. This is a 30-night sampler of that idea. Each night is a curated triple feature: all three pieces share a theme, question, or mood, so you hear three voices arguing about the same thing across centuries, continents, and forms.
Night One
Beginnings & the open road
published Night One
poem The Road Not Taken
essay Walking
story Cathedral
Night Two
The strange inside the ordinary
Night Two
poem This Is Just To Say
essay Total Eclipse
story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Night Three
Memory and what it edits
Night Three
poem One Art
essay On Keeping a Notebook
story The Swimmer
Night Four
The body, honest
Night Four
poem I Sing the Body Electric (Section 9)
essay On Being a Cripple
story Good Country People
Night Five
Time bending
Night Five
poem Burnt Norton (opening)
essay Kafka and His Precursors
story Story of Your Life
Night Six
Cities and strangers
Night Six
poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
essay Here Is New York
story The Lady with the Dog
Night Seven
Grief and what survives
Night Seven
poem Funeral Blues
essay Notes on Grief
story In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried
Night Eight
What the animal gaze undoes
Night Eight
poem The Fish
essay Learning the Grammar of Animacy
story Axolotl
Night Nine
Work and its meaning
Night Nine
poem Digging
essay Shop Class as Soulcraft (excerpt)
story Bartleby, the Scrivener
Night Ten
COUNTER-CANON: Desire against the grain
Night Ten
poem Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong
essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
story The Happy Prince
Night Eleven
Childhood seen sideways
Night Eleven
poem Fern Hill
essay Once More to the Lake
story Araby
Night Twelve
The uncanny knock at the door
Night Twelve
poem The Raven
essay The Philosophy of Composition
story The Veldt
Night Thirteen
Power and small cruelties
Night Thirteen
poem The Colonel
essay Politics and the English Language
story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Night Fourteen
Translated voices: war's long shadow
Night Fourteen
poem The End and the Beginning
essay Hiroshima Notes (excerpt)
story Wanderer, Comest Thou to Spa...
Night Fifteen
Loneliness as a room
Night Fifteen
poem There is a Solitude of Space
essay The Lonely City, Ch. 1
story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Night Sixteen
COUNTER-CANON: Language turned inside out
Night Sixteen
poem To live in the Borderlands means you
essay Dictee, "Melpomene Tragedy"
story The Babysitter
Night Seventeen
SCIENCE: The natural world as laboratory and temple
Night Seventeen
poem Wild Geese
essay The Lives of a Cell
story To Build a Fire
Night Eighteen
Class, money, the table
Night Eighteen
poem Ballad of the Landlord
essay Consider the Lobster
story Babylon Revisited
Night Nineteen
Mothers and daughters
Night Nineteen
poem wishes for sons
essay Of Woman Born (excerpt)
story Everyday Use
Night Twenty
Translated voices: dream-logic tradition
Night Twenty
poem Romance Sonámbulo
essay On the Marionette Theatre
story The Metamorphosis (Part I)
Night Twenty-One
Faith, doubt, and the cosmos
Night Twenty-One
poem God's Grandeur
essay Teaching a Stone to Talk
story A Good Man is Hard to Find
Night Twenty-Two
COUNTER-CANON: Structure as sabotage
Night Twenty-Two
poem The Golden Shovel
essay The Death of the Author
story Lost in the Funhouse
Night Twenty-Three
Desire and its disguises
Night Twenty-Three
poem I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed
essay Bluets (selections)
story Hills Like White Elephants
Night Twenty-Four
The migrant, the in-between
Night Twenty-Four
poem Home
essay Reflections on Exile
story Interpreter of Maladies
Night Twenty-Five
Translated voices: comedy and the absurd
Night Twenty-Five
poem Mr Cogito on the Need for Precision
essay Selections from Today I Wrote Nothing
story The Nose
Night Twenty-Six
SCIENCE: What measurement misses
Night Twenty-Six
poem When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
essay The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
story Carbon
Night Twenty-Seven
Race, witness, voice
Night Twenty-Seven
poem We Real Cool
essay Stranger in the Village
story Recitatif
Night Twenty-Eight
COUNTER-CANON: What the canon suppresses
Night Twenty-Eight
poem A Litany for Survival
essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me
story The Lottery
Night Twenty-Nine
What the dying see
Night Twenty-Nine
poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
essay Topic of Cancer
story The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Ch. 9-12)
Night Thirty
And then, the work begins
Night Thirty
poem Ithaka
essay Zen in the Art of Writing (Ch. 1)
story The Drummer Boy of Shiloh