Tag Archives: language

Talisman

Posted on December 4, 2025 by John Biscello

Wordwise, edges and ledges: we are falling off. We, as in word-wielding also world-wearied, we, an endangered species, parrots with branded larynxes … falling off. Ask a stranger to cup your balls (male or female you, no matter) as you … Continue reading →

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Domain

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

   Samuel Beckett tried to corral silence by making silence the domain of language. To not say anything, to ultimately embrace silence, would have meant an impossible task—setting down the pen, laying to rest the voice—and placing a moratorium on … Continue reading →

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Scraps

Posted on October 14, 2025 by John Biscello

Each one of us are curating our own reality, our own collections. Philosophy is a crooked thumb trying to hitch a lift to the stars. I listen to the wind sing, but can’t understand the words. The No Trespassing sign … Continue reading →

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Fable

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

I have become moonless in my grief, a paled comparison. But to what? To who I used to be? What I expected to become? I feel as if I’ve been laid out an operating table, and Time, as a methodically … Continue reading →

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Out of Silence

Posted on November 10, 2024 by John Biscello

Beckett spoke about it: the inability to keep quiet. The inability to not say stories, to not make stories, to not find oneself shaped according to stories fitted to shifting forms. Beckett, with gallows irony, talked plenty about silences. He … Continue reading →

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Sound and the Furies

Posted on May 20, 2022 by John Biscello

My novel, The Last Furies, was partly inspired by the life, legend and poetic reckoning of the Symbolist brat-prince, Arthur Rimbaud. As a hybrid work, that is both an endless remix of a novel and a sorcerer’s cryptic handbook, the … Continue reading →

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Word-Pray

Posted on June 5, 2020 by John Biscello

Please understand that words matter. This, in no way is meant to belittle, diminish or dismiss the power of action, but rather, to add “words” to the conversation as a sort of auxiliary spiritual sibling, or bolts in a timeless … Continue reading →

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Not a Sonnet

Posted on June 6, 2018 by John Biscello

I can go on. Sometimes you fall off the edge of a sentence and find another one waiting for you there, like the billowcushy arms of a cloud-woman, or keenly lighted wraith, and you can go on, holding hands with … Continue reading →

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In My Solitude

Posted on June 3, 2018 by John Biscello

It is, for me, as well as other writers of a certain breed, a familiar haunt and barbed echo, that fear of being found out and exposed as a fraud and imposter, some busted metaphor that won’t hold up under … Continue reading →

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Sintax

Posted on May 26, 2018 by John Biscello

There’s nothing sexier than a girl undressing in cursive to reveal the curves and loops of pure language squeezing every last drop from metaphor to exalt and fondle the core of similes standing in for skin and fire and other … Continue reading →

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