Come on in. Let me show you around.
Why read a writer?
Because you like what he says. You like the way he says it. He makes you think. He makes you feel. Maybe even, when it all goes right, he takes you somewhere: the air is a little thinner, it’s fragrant, there’s a certain kind of — luminous — light . . .
That’s what Homo Vitruvius is about: the rewards of language and of thought in a fully lived and examined life, through the artifice of the written word. As I pursue that end in myself, my goal for Homo Vitruvius, in your reading along, is that you will, too.
In that pursuit, every week I publish essays on literature, culture, society, and all things human, with poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and even drama part of the mix. There is no barrier here between thought and feeling, intellect and embodied emotion, or one genre of writing and another. All are employed and enjoyed to give me, and I hope you, too — that’s my goal — the fullest possible experience of being creatively and intellectually alive.
The Publication Schedule (all arriving in your mailbox at 6 a.m. EST)
Homo Vitruvius publishes once a week, on Saturday mornings. Occasionally, events in the world or events in my life (!) lead me to publish a second time. Sometimes, not often.
Free subscribers gain access to
Everything new, on publication, and for the week following — every essay, creative work, commentary, or exploration published. There are no new, paid-subscriber-only posts.
Engaged conversation with me and other Vitruvians (that’s what I call those who read me here) regarding the writing I publish and the thoughts and feelings they provoke. Commenting is not for paid subscribers only.
Alerts of my off-Substack publications and readings.
Paid subscribers additionally receive
For a $2 MONTHLY Subscription ($24 per year annualized)
· Access to the full 2-year+ archive of previous writing.
· A free digital download on request of Waiting for Word.
For a $40 ANNUAL Subscription
· Access to the full 2+-year archive.
· A free digital download on request of Waiting for Word.
· Signed hard copies of Waiting for Word and Footnote available for purchase.
· 3 gift subscriptions yearly 50% discount ($25).
· For fellow Substack and other writers, as a thank you for your subscription, 1 month per quarter (4X) screen-top promotion of your stack, website, or book.
For $125 ANNUAL SUSTAINING PATRONS able to offer their support to my writing talents and project
· All annually paid subscriber benefits.
· 6 gift or referral subscriptions yearly at 50% discount ($25).
· Annual one-hour Zoom reading and talk for your book club or other organization.
· As ever, over the centuries, an artist’s gratitude to a patron.
Who am I? What am I?
Here’s a long answer.
In brief, I’m a former wayward soul and business executive who had a thirty-year second career as a professor of English and who is also a lifelong writer. Could have been a philosopher, too, a filmmaker, historian, or lawyer, but I chose to be what I am. I feel and I think. Neither natural uprising in being predominates over the other, and in that tension, perhaps, is where you will find me. As you’ve already read, I write and publish in many genres, including, most recently, in longform, my poetry collection Waiting for Word. Preoccupying themes in my writing include time and memory, the crisis of personal identity, and the drama of ordinary lives situated in history. I loved my mother and my father, but don’t subscribe because of that, so did Michael Corleone.
About the Home Vitruvius name and logo
Leonardo Da Vinci’s 1487 Renaissance and pre-Enlightenment drawing, known as Vitruvian man, inspired by ideas of the Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio, sought to represent, in a man equally circumscribed by the circle and the square, a “Canon of Proportions”: a “cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). [Leonardo] believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe." That is, to see the human in the universe and the universe in the human, or, as I add, to think in proportion, even about the disproportionate.
I have a second Substack: you can subscribe to one or both
For a democratic future.
Finally, for now, why not visit my writer website?
Thanks so much for reading. You read; therefore, the writer exists.
Poet. Storyteller. Dramatist. Essayist. Artificer.
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AJA
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Join fellow Vitruvians
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