I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading —
It vexes me to choose another guide —
― Emily Brontë
Welcome to Portable Bohemia, a website and blog devoted to celebration of the artistic spirit and pursuit of intellectual adventure.
The blog features essays, reviews, rants, screeds, ruminations, and on the good days maybe a measure of insightful commentary about books, cinema, art and culture, sports, and sundry other themes and topics. Matters of politics and current affairs are taken up as conscience and honest indignation dictate.
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Portable Bohemia goes Substack. This is a work in progress as I figure out how best to integrate Substack posts with the website. Content remains free. Click the link above to subscribe to receive free posts via email and the Substack app.
Check out the Gallery page for photographs. For the most part I point the camera and hope something good will come of it. I like to think that sometimes it does.
​​Contact me if you have questions, comments, or information about upcoming events. I would love to hear from you.
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The site member feature has been discontinued. I set it up for a while as a way to monitor comments on blog posts. This proved both unnecessary and unwieldy. New requests show up somehow from somewhere from time to time. These are blocked without reply. Readers who wish to contact me may use the from on the contact page.
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Newsletters
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October 1, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 19: poetry announcement, cranky memo from the cinema desk, commentary on passage of the CR to fund the government at FY2023 levels for 45 days, and a note about opening day of the House Oversight Committee's Hunter, I mean, Joe, Biden impeachment inquiry…
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September 15, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 18: poem publication announcement, Putin's defense of Trump, Kim's defense of Putin, impeachment inquiry, budget chaos, Boebert escorted from theater…
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September 1, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 17: reports on my recent return to a favorite poet first read when I was eighteen, Harold Bloom on Walt Whitman, the sentencing of Proud Boys leaders, and Moscow after eighteen months of war…
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August 15, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 16: conservative case that Donald Trump and others are disqualified from holding federal office by virtue of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, a closer look at Biden voters who are not all just coastal elites, trivialization of the prosecution of Trump when judges and prosecutors are treated as pop celebrities…
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August 1, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 15: a note about an upcoming essay, analysis of an argument made by pretenders for the Republican nomination, comment on bipartisan gerontocaracy, Barbie frenzy…
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July 15, 2023 / Vol. VIII, No. 14: Mona Charen's refutation of Trump's "bonkers" claim that during his presidency America was respected all over the world, the mysterious case of the disappearing whistleblower, a memo from the film desk…
David Matthews Portable Bohemia
at Substack
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Blueprint for the Presumed Restoration of the Trump Regime, September 27, 2023. Plans are afoot to turn the clock back to the nineteenth century with a radical overhaul of the executive branch of government…
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Incident at Chapin High, September 19, 2023. The photo on the Washington Post home page of a teacher standing at the entrance to Chapin High School drew my eye to the headline: "Her students reported her for a lesson on race…
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Fall Term 2023, September 8, 2023. Greetings at the beginning of the fall term. Days and evenings grow cooler, sunlight softer. Soon leaves will turn color and fall lazily to the ground. The rainy season with our Portland drizzle, cooling breeze, and gentle melancholy…​
Poems
​Adelaide Literary Magazine December 2022
Otoliths issue fifty-seven, southern autumn, 2020
Quill & Parchment
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Easy to Forget (February 2007)
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A Hard Climb (March 2007)
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Wait (April 2008)
Steam Ticket Vol. 25 Spring 2022
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Literary
Websites of Interest
Activism
​Arts
Bookstores
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City Lights (San Francicso)
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Odd Bird Books (Columbia, SC)
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Powell's Books (Portland)
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The Source (Detroit)
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The Strand (New York)
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Tall Tales (Atlanta)
Coffee Dens, etc.
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