Contemporaries Essays

Lesbians at Sea: Queerness and The Bachelor Franchise

When asked in a 2014 The New York Times Magazine interview if there should be a gay Bachelor, Chris Harrison, the franchise’s former host, responded: “The question is: Is it…

Here for the Wrong Representation: The Misuse of Diversity in the Bachelor Franchise

Season Nineteen of The Bachelorette (2022) proved to be one of the most “dramatic seasons ever.” Deviating from the show’s typical format of having one bachelorette, this season featured two…

Disability Narratives in Bachelor Nation

There is an exception to every rule. When it comes to the portrayal of disability in The Bachelor franchise and its spin-offs, only exceptions, as in, people with disabilities who…

The Bachelor at 21: Our Final Rose

March of 2023 marked the twenty-first “birthday” of ABC’s hit show The Bachelor. Since its inception, the show has presented itself as helping young, wealthy, and conventionally attractive Americans find…

A Thank You Note

Dear John, I’ve been reading “Ten Things I Do Every Day” every day. “Now I don’t know anything anymore.” What does sacred, ordinary protocol have to do with knowing anything…

Mere Horizon: The Form of Desire in John Keene’s Poetics

I. “Dark to Themselves,” the eponymous poem of the sixth section of John Keene’s Punks, begins with a command, which also serves as an ars poetica:”Invent, experiment: chaos . ….

An Escaped Slave and a Good Person

One of the joys of encountering John Keene’s work is reading his many interviews. Out of respect for his interviewers and readers, time and again Keene finds ways to expand…

An Abstract Architecture: John Keene’s Counternarratives

“Long hours in the study of any text will reveal inner, unseen contours, an abstract architecture,” writes John Keene.1 But even long hours of studying the stories and novellas that…

Passagens Estranhas: Translating the Obscene with Hilda Hilst and John Keene

“Oh, how delicious and practical it is that people think us strange . . . ” — Hilda Hilst, Letters from a Seducer, translated by John Keene At the outset…

John Keene’s Keywording

*** “In the mark event, you enter your signature.” So begins Seismosis, John Keene’s 2006 book of poetry, published as a collaboration with the artist Christopher Stackhouse. The quoted line…