Posts by: J.S. Porter

J.S. Porter

October 3, 2018October 3, 2018

First Reformed: An Unconventional Review of an Unconventional Movie

Culture Critic

for Susan McCaslin and Mark Haddock By J.S. Porter Director and screenwriter Paul Schrader has made a film worth your time. You may know him as the screenwriter of Taxi ... Read more

September 1, 2018September 2, 2018

How to Read Harper’s Magazine May 2018 with the Retractable Tongue of a Snake

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

a prose poem for John Robert Colombo Read the way the snake moves, how it smells with its tongue, how it eats mice Glance, graze, ignore, skip, survey, wander in ... Read more

August 1, 2018August 3, 2018

Books for the Planet

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

for Kaizen, Marshall, and Blake Every now and then something drops into your life and changes it, ever so slightly. My subscription to The Atlantic came to my mailbox today, the ... Read more

July 1, 2018July 2, 2018

Titles
(In Articles, Books, Movies, Stories, Songs etc.)

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

I CARE. Y DON’T U? That’s a better title than plain old “Titles,” isn’t it? I have your attention now, don’t I? Sometimes a title, or headline, is everything. It ... Read more

June 4, 2018July 12, 2018

Black Panther

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

for Daniel J. Porter, M.Eng and Jesse R. Guscott, MD Africa. Birthplace of us all. Ancestral home of the African diaspora. The land of dreams and sometimes nightmares. Ancient giant ... Read more

May 1, 2018May 1, 2018

Tribute to a Friend – Wayne Allan (1941-2018)

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

“There are people one meets in books or in life whom one does not merely observe, meet or know. A deep resonance of one’s entire being is immediately set up ... Read more

April 8, 2018April 9, 2018

Hemingway’s Finca Vigía – The Lookout House

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

– By J.S. Porter; Photographs by Cheryl Porter For Daniel and Rachel Fourteen miles east of Havana is Hemingway’s Cuban home—Finca Vigía, “lookout house” – now Museo Hemingway. It’s located ... Read more

March 2, 2018April 8, 2018

On The Shape of Water

Culture Critic, InRetro Magazine

A scene from ‘The Shape of Water’ – filmed in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario (HO-Fox Searchlight) – By J.S. Porter As in most fairy tales, whether ET or Beauty and ... Read more

February 1, 2018March 2, 2018

I Love New York

Culture Critic, Poetry

for Rachel – By J.S. Porter I love New York. I love it because it’s a Big Minestrone Soup, everybody from everywhere, thrown into a Giant Pot, all simmering – ... Read more

December 1, 2017December 1, 2017

Our Lady of the Veils

Culture Critic, Poetry

– By J.S. Porter A superhero has a particular skill— impervious to bullets, good with webs, etc.— a particular flaw, kryptonite, say. Veiled Lady’s gig is disguise; she veils. ... Read more

November 1, 2017November 1, 2017

Emily Dickinson at War

Culture Critic, Poetry

– By J.S. Porter Gun fire When you read Emily Dickinson you enter a War Zone Sometimes the war is over ... Read more

October 8, 2017November 1, 2017

Glenn Gould as a model of how to get your work done

Culture Critic, Poetry

…the fabulous terror of not knowing before/one begins. Again. Kate Braid, “The Goldberg Variations (1981)” in A Well-Mannered Storm – By J.S. Porter Start something big Like Bach’s Goldberg ... Read more

September 1, 2017November 1, 2017

I Must be Saved: Listening to Madeleine Peyroux

Culture Critic, Poetry

Listening to Madeleine Peyroux’s “I must be saved” from Bare Bones for Rev. John Porter (1919-2003) my sun, my moon, my whole sky – By J.S. Porter Lose your ... Read more

August 5, 2017November 1, 2017

A Sister Says Goodbye to a Brother

Culture Critic, Poetry

for Kate Van Viegen – By J.S. Porter When Anne Carson lost her brother, she wrote a book about him. Anne Carson, a Canadian poet, wrote a book called Nox ... Read more

July 2, 2017November 1, 2017

The History of Poetry

Culture Critic, Poetry

for Rachel – By J.S. Porter I like my poetry pure and simple. Bug a boo, I love you. That’s my daughter talking to her soon- to- ... Read more

June 8, 2017November 1, 2017

Why Read?

Culture Critic, Poetry

I used to say: Read because
you get to know your shadow,
you see the world multi-dimensionally,
you understand the Other…
But these are pastoral reasons,
sheep-in-the-meadow reasons…

May 1, 2017November 1, 2017

Un

Culture Critic, Poetry

According to David Crystal’s, ‘Think on my Words:’ Exploring Shakespeare’s Language, Shakespeare has a penchant for using Un in imaginative ways – 314 instances in the OED where he is ... Read more

April 15, 2017November 1, 2017

Shakespeare’s Library

Culture Critic

– By J.S. Porter O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams. His nutshell ... Read more

March 5, 2017November 1, 2017

A Note on Patti Smith

Culture Critic

– By J.S. Porter A rememberer of the familial dead and the artistic dead. Reader of Blake and Rimbaud, Bolaño and Murakami. Mourner (with humour). What else can ... Read more

February 3, 2017November 1, 2017

Fake News

Culture Critic

– By J.S. Porter Is fake the keyword of our time? Fake presidents, fake marks, fake smiles, fake eyebrows, fake bank accounts, fake money, fake sympathy, fake trees, fake ... Read more

January 5, 2017February 3, 2017

Gord Downie, Great Soul

Culture Critic

Photo by Chris Leboe. (his Lakota spirit name – “He who walks with the stars”) – By J.S. Porter saw him once, with a host of other notables. He sang ... Read more

December 5, 2016November 20, 2016

Singing the Light

Culture Critic, Poetry

Singing the Light for Sarah Hall by j.s. porter The day’s soot on an obscenely tense face, an ill-fitting mask, the itchy and uncomfortable skin, what do you do with ... Read more

November 20, 2016November 22, 2016

So Lightly Here

Culture Critic

Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016 so lightly here by j.s. porter we’re all lightly here, says the tao and the zen, says the bible, says Leonard Cohen in a song, we’re ... Read more

October 10, 2016October 11, 2016

Hillary and the Donald: The Second Debate

Culture Critic

By J.S. Porter I’m naïve enough to believe that society will be changed by examination of ideas through books and the press, and that information can prove to be greater ... Read more

October 2, 2016October 3, 2016

Donald J. Trump: Something’s happenin’ – The First Debate

Culture Critic

“I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament. I have a winning temperament. I know how to win.” – Donald Trump

May 26, 2014June 21, 2014

Portrait of a Potter – Frances Ward (plus Brancusi, a Japanese word & the Book of Jeremiah)

Culture Critic

Pottery is an old art form. As old as the Bible. You’ve heard the lines sometimes referred to a s “The Potter’s House and the Ruined Vessel” from Jeremiah 18: ... Read more

April 30, 2014June 19, 2014

Orphan Black – Wow!

Culture Critic

Above: Cosima, played by Tatiana Maslany, ponders on who to trust in BBC’s Orphan Black. I’m a Johnny-come-lately to this sensational TV thriller by BBC America on the Space channel. ... Read more

April 4, 2014April 15, 2017

Dennis Lee’s “Deeper” and National Poetry Month

Culture Critic, Poetry

Is poetry in your life? Should it be? What are you missing if it isn’t? Sometimes people get their poetry from Björk or Radiohead or Arcade Fire. Sometimes they don’t ... Read more

March 7, 2014June 20, 2014

12 Years a Slave – The Academy Got It Right

Culture Critic

12 Years a Slave really was the best picture—the richest storyline, the most courageous reach, the best ensemble acting, including stellar performances from Lupita Nyong’o (Patsey), best-supporting actress, and the ... Read more

February 19, 2014June 19, 2014

Mavis Gallant (1922-2014)

Culture Critic

Writer down. Maybe we readers need to scream that phrase the way officers scream it for fellow officers struck down by gunfire. A great Canadian writer – Mavis Gallant – ... Read more