William Stobb

              Spoon River Poetry Review               Editors' Prize winner A Moment for Authentic Shine This is the greatest moment of your life, said the voice both familiar and distant, like a childhood friend become spokesperson for a cleaning product— which caused the many hats to turn in many directions and one robed arm to extend. And what after all had been passing? The sounds birds made often seemed more cogent than the swirl of argument, a cyclone in a sandbox.   So much management we ought to have degrees was a type of joke made at outmoded parties. Still with shades and declarations echoes of heroic solos translated out of urgent decades while almost unnoticed, pensive tunes accumulate in the mix like thunder clouds on these warmer days.   Regardless, the names come unpinned, stars die, a closetful of semi- recognizable jackets and hats be-speaks the by-gone, and yet the baffling rekindling of romance may justify the mainten

Since 2004, men have been growing mustaches during the month of November to raise awareness about prostate cancer.  This is a good idea in certain obvious ways--people should think about prostate cancer.  Men should get exams after the age of 40--I think that's the recommendation. But it's a bad idea in one clear way: it's gross.  When you see a man sporting an especially bushy Mo-vember stache, you can't help but see, for a brief, horrible moment, his whole facial apparatus as a metaphor for the traditional prostate access point.  You know what I'm saying.  For a month every year, a whole world full of smiling face-anus assemblages. Here's what I propose: let's switch it up.  Let's make August prostate awareness month, sponsored by Speedo.  At the beach, mowing the lawn, walking the poodle in the heat of the afternoon, men can wear Speedos for prostate awareness.  We can even sell special Speedos with a word across the butt, like... I dunno... &quo

The original Planet of the Apes is a 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle.  I've read it.  It's okay.  I guess Pierre Boulle wrote some other spy novels, and those were pretty good, and he was in love with a married woman, who promised to leave her husband, but ultimately went back to him, and so Pierre Boulle had to go on with a hole in his heart.  But his apes have gone on for fifty years, fascinating us. I always preferred the Planet of the Apes movies to the later sci-fi bonanzas, the Star Wars movies.  The Planet movies weren't exaggerated fairy tales--they were difficult, and dark, and they showed a future that had gotten out of control.  That seemed, I guess, more persuasive to me than the heroic blah-blah-blah of the Star Wars franchise. One time, when I was six, I was at my friend Dane Peterson's house with a couple other kids, and Dane's older brother Paul was putting us through an "astronaut training" cycle in Dane's basement.  We had to run do

This week in America, a 19-year-old college quarterback is in the news.  He's a big star, and he's acting irreverently--partying and unabashedly enjoying the spotlight. I laugh, thinking about my own 19-year-old self: a socially awkward college sophomore spending inordinate amounts of time in the library basement, reading all the uncollected Salinger stories in Collier's and Saturday Evening Post on microfiche. It was not a glamorous time.  I felt like Salinger's witty, vulnerable young characters had leapt directly from my own adolescent loneliness onto the page.  When I look back at them now, which I tend to do about once every summer, I sometimes find them a little hyperbolic, or idealized.  But I still feel how much those characters--not so much Holden Caulfield, but more the Glass family, and the characters in the short stories--meant to me as a young adult, and the gratitude I feel toward them quiets my inner pedant. One of the highlights of my 2013 summer w

A few weeks ago I wrote a post suggesting that the mathematical concept of zero may interfere with our understanding of the physical world around us.  Because of zero, maybe we believe that there's a  smallest thing--that there's a floor, a hard limit on the low end of sizes, distances, and quantities--when in fact, that may not be true.  Every point of matter--every atom--may contain infinite regress within it.  Or... the concepts of "large" or "small" or "inward" and "outward" may simply not be well-founded. Just after writing that post, I caught Radiolab's "The Trouble with Everything."   In the second half of the episode, Radiolab co-host Robert Krulwich argues with Columbia physicist Brian Greene.  Now that physics suggests that there may be infinite possible universes (there's no reason to think that the big bang happened only once, in one location, i.e., our universe), Krulwich argues, the dream that Physics

It’s interesting to think about a world where the concept of zero doesn’t exist.   It’s not that farfetched.   Zero seems to have been invented long after other numbers, and doesn’t really arise from any desire to signify existential absence, only mathematical absence.   It looks like zero was invented as a placeholder in mathematical operations.   If you have a number in the tens column but nothing in the ones column, you put a little circle there so the rows stay straight.   Someone thought that up in about 900 CE, apparently.   The Arabic word for it,   صف , signifies “sifre,” or “empty,” like “cypher,” or “chiffre,” meaning “figure,” also the name of the James Bond villain from Casino Royale , which is now my favorite movie character name—“Le Chiffre?”   as in “The Figure?” or “The Empty?”   I mean… that’s brilliant character naming, especially in a movie that involves lots of poker chips.    My point, though, is that zero came to exist because of specific mathematical oper

Her:   Look, I mean, it’s just really hard right now, and it’s obviously not going to get any easier. Him:   You don’t know that.   I mean…. Her:     Don’t interrupt me.    You always interrupt me.   God,  I’ve been putting up with this shit for sixteen weeks. Him:     Sixteen weeks? Her:     116 days. Him:     You counted the days?   That’s messed up. …   Wait.   Are you breaking up with me? Her:     Genius.   Good job on that Ph. D. Him:     Wait.   Just wait.   Hold that thought. Her:     Where are you going? Him:     This’ll take one second. Her:     The tripod?   The camera?   What?   No! Him:     YES!   Listen.   This is only gonna happen once, and I want to remember it.   If this is our last moment together, I want to hold onto it [he sets up camera, begins recording]. Her:     You’re sick. Him:     Don’t do anything different [messing with camera].   One second… just… okay: break up with me normal. Her:     What?