E.M. Woodruff

Where is your submit button

Misread the TMA guidelines: missed the deadline to submit. open.substack.com/pub/emwoodruff…

@NewPopLit Thanks for the clarification!

@woodrelli I'm referring to all the Ivy League writers and professors-- who are all doing well-- who've supported the backlash against DEI. (Which was, granted, a seriously flawed attempt to even a seriously uneven playing field.)

(Most) intellectuals are such puppets, recycling the same cast of names they were taught to discuss in school and never stepping outside acceptable corridors of thought. The cagier (or more honest?) ones see their world as a battle for turf, which explains the Great Reaction.

@press_roi This hits. Our family dog is getting old. Still really full of life, but just not in the same way.

As we wind down 2025 and look back at the year, let's also take a look back at the amazing work in issue 92, starting with this extraordinary poem from Jiwon Huh. This is "Because Orpheus Looked Back," and it's live now! roifaineantpress.com/post/because-o…

I've reached this stage in my essay...

@brecht_dp Have you tried writing "Actually, I was wrong about everything you just read."

My analysis of season 1 of The Chair Company. open.substack.com/pub/emwoodruff…

Why do we feel that AI content is not a response to our culture being driven by a financial equation with time as a major component? our cultural equation PREFERS LLM assisted content that slides under the radar. An equation that has always preferred commercialized, boring slop?

People have misplaced their focus on LLMs. My students aren’t using it to generate wholesale drafts. (Though some have and will continue to do so. Student’s cheating: What’s new?) The AI slop wave is here and like all slop, it’s just boring.

Analyzing The Chair Company and the drive to subvert corporate control through transcendent truth

Review of Marty Supreme open.substack.com/pub/emwoodruff…

Set in 1952, Marty Supreme is strangely about WWII, and somehow manages to avoid the topic of the Korean War (which ended in 1953) in its entirely too long runtime.

after three christmases away from my family i am adopting this romanesque tradition of going really hard and then sleeping

I cannot pledge any money to you or your cultural revolution but i wish you luck in reviving romanticism… I am too much in debt… of course, i am dying too… but good luck…

Book Review: Coining A Wishing Tower by Ayesha Raees open.substack.com/pub/emwoodruff…

thinking of the conceptual gravity of words. scared

thank you to the paris review for liking me. i accept it completely and without hesitation theparisreview.org/blog/2025/12/1…

@Katie_Dozier @onlypoemsmag Curious as to what you mean about the poem's "presumption of interest present"

I love so much about what @onlypoemsmag is doing, but in the interest of open criticism—which I believe is sorely needed in poetry—and much as I’m a fan of David Duchovny the actor, I’m not a fan of the poems. None of them would’ve made it to the top 15% of submissions that I personally read for because of the cliche diction, clunky rhymes, lack of movement, and presumption of interest present in them.

very grateful to have three poems up at @havehadhavehad today! they’re all after George Oppen’s magisterial Of Being Numerous — many thanks to guest editor Sam Heaps and to Aaron & Crow for all they do to keep HAD HAD 💀

@bloominonionlit Huge fan of Ohio myself

Ohio? More like Snohio.