John Madera
@johnmadera.bsky.social
Author of 𝘕𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). Editor of @BigOtherMag.bsky.social. Find more at http://johnmadera.com.
“We do not lack communication; on the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.”
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
November 13, 2025 at 6:49 PM
“We do not lack communication; on the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.”
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
―Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
(Image: Antonio Casanova y Estorach's AMUSING GOSSIP (1890))
“What is style? Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introducing a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity to the appearance of freedom.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 AM
“What is style? Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introducing a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity to the appearance of freedom.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:11 AM
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts [...], unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 AM
“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts [...], unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself)."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 AM
"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself)."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it..."
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
November 13, 2025 at 4:09 AM
"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it..."
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
—Roland Barthes, THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
“I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:09 AM
“I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.”
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
―Roland Barthes
―Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:08 AM
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
―Roland Barthes
―Roland Barthes
"[O]ne might say there are sexy sentences: disturbing by their very isolation, as if they possessed the promise which is made to us, the readers, by a linguistic practice, as if we were to seek them out by virtue of a pleasure which knows what it wants."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:08 AM
"[O]ne might say there are sexy sentences: disturbing by their very isolation, as if they possessed the promise which is made to us, the readers, by a linguistic practice, as if we were to seek them out by virtue of a pleasure which knows what it wants."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"What love lays bare in me is energy."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:07 AM
"What love lays bare in me is energy."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"[A]nd I, the one who speaks, I too am disfigured: soliloquy makes me into a monster: one huge tongue."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:06 AM
"[A]nd I, the one who speaks, I too am disfigured: soliloquy makes me into a monster: one huge tongue."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:05 AM
"Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
November 13, 2025 at 4:04 AM
"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."
—Roland Barthes
—Roland Barthes
Recently acquired: Current U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze's INTO THE HUSH (Copper Canyon Press), Sze's most recent poetry collection, which includes "Scintillant," which I published in BIG OTHER in 2021!
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Recently acquired: Current U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze's INTO THE HUSH (Copper Canyon Press), Sze's most recent poetry collection, which includes "Scintillant," which I published in BIG OTHER in 2021!
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
Delighted to publish a superb suite of poems by Traci Brimhall in BIG OTHER today!
bigother.com/2025/11/12/s...
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/12/s...
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
Six Poems, by Traci Brimhall
Color Theory Before Newton used a prism to break light into color, Aristotle said everything was white and black. What could be simpler? The air— white. Water—white. Black was the color of t…
bigother.com
November 12, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Delighted to publish a superb suite of poems by Traci Brimhall in BIG OTHER today!
bigother.com/2025/11/12/s...
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/12/s...
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social and @bigothermag.bsky.social
Stay tuned for superb new fiction by Lance Olsen in BIG OTHER! In the meantime, go read and/or reread the marvelous writing of Lance's that I've published in the journal over the years!
bigother.com/author/lance...
bigother.com/author/lance...
Lance Olsen
<a href="http://www.lanceolsen.com/"><b>Lance Olsen</b></a> is the author of many novels, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/578/9781950539956"><i>Absolute Away</i></a>, <a href="https://booksh...
bigother.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Stay tuned for superb new fiction by Lance Olsen in BIG OTHER! In the meantime, go read and/or reread the marvelous writing of Lance's that I've published in the journal over the years!
bigother.com/author/lance...
bigother.com/author/lance...
Delighted to publish Michael Martone's "Follies, Ruins, and Ducks" in BIG OTHER today!
bigother.com/2025/11/11/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/11/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
Follies, Ruins, Ducks, by Michael Martone
Capitol Park: Tuscaloosa It was on a bluff, a bluff. Alabama’s state capitol building for twenty years. There was a dome. And then it became a “Female College” until it burned to the ground …
bigother.com
November 11, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Delighted to publish Michael Martone's "Follies, Ruins, and Ducks" in BIG OTHER today!
bigother.com/2025/11/11/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
bigother.com/2025/11/11/f...
Cc: @bigothermag.bsky.social
I've long loved Traci Brimhall's poems so you can imagine how delighted I am to soon be publishing a superb sextet of poems by Brimhall in BIG OTHER!
tracibrimhallpoet.com
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social
tracibrimhallpoet.com
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social
Traci Brimhall
tracibrimhallpoet.com
November 9, 2025 at 6:15 PM
I've long loved Traci Brimhall's poems so you can imagine how delighted I am to soon be publishing a superb sextet of poems by Brimhall in BIG OTHER!
tracibrimhallpoet.com
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social
tracibrimhallpoet.com
Cc: @tracibrimhall.bsky.social
A luta continua!
(Image: Joan Mitchell's Ode to Joy (A Poem by Frank O’Hara) (1970–71))
(Image: Joan Mitchell's Ode to Joy (A Poem by Frank O’Hara) (1970–71))
November 9, 2025 at 3:34 PM
A luta continua!
(Image: Joan Mitchell's Ode to Joy (A Poem by Frank O’Hara) (1970–71))
(Image: Joan Mitchell's Ode to Joy (A Poem by Frank O’Hara) (1970–71))
"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
—Audre Lorde
(Image: Naudline Pierre's TAKE GREAT CARE, 2019)
—Audre Lorde
(Image: Naudline Pierre's TAKE GREAT CARE, 2019)
November 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
—Audre Lorde
(Image: Naudline Pierre's TAKE GREAT CARE, 2019)
—Audre Lorde
(Image: Naudline Pierre's TAKE GREAT CARE, 2019)
Delighted to learn that several poems by Peggy Robles-Alvarado that I published in BIG OTHER's Puerto Rican Writers Folio: A Hauntology in 2022 are included in Robles-Alvarado's BURN ME BACK, published this year by Four Way Books!
bookshop.org/a/578/978196...
Cc: @fourwaybooks.bsky.social
bookshop.org/a/578/978196...
Cc: @fourwaybooks.bsky.social
Burn Me Back
Check out Burn Me Back - "My Spanglish," Peggy Robles-Alvarado declares, "drops the -s and makes it ma' o meno'," replaces accent marks with side-eye, "has a Tía sin papeles," and recognizes that "the...
bookshop.org
November 8, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Delighted to learn that several poems by Peggy Robles-Alvarado that I published in BIG OTHER's Puerto Rican Writers Folio: A Hauntology in 2022 are included in Robles-Alvarado's BURN ME BACK, published this year by Four Way Books!
bookshop.org/a/578/978196...
Cc: @fourwaybooks.bsky.social
bookshop.org/a/578/978196...
Cc: @fourwaybooks.bsky.social
Delighted to learn that current U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze's "Scintillant," which I published in BIG OTHER in 2021, is included in INTO THE HUSH (Copper Canyon Press), Sze's most recent book.
bookshop.org/a/578/978155...
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
bookshop.org/a/578/978155...
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
Into the Hush
Check out Into the Hush - <p><strong>*From the 25th U.S. Poet Laureate*</strong></p><p><strong>*Winner of the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry for Lifetime Achievement*</strong></p><p><strong>...
bookshop.org
November 8, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Delighted to learn that current U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze's "Scintillant," which I published in BIG OTHER in 2021, is included in INTO THE HUSH (Copper Canyon Press), Sze's most recent book.
bookshop.org/a/578/978155...
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
bookshop.org/a/578/978155...
Cc: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social