there is good content about writing macros in Joy of Clojure, there’s also a book on clojure macros out there that I haven’t read

Awake now, and capable again of rational thought. ... Macro is needed because I want to define the component name, not just its action. (That is: the macro is creating the definition of, e.g., sodium.core/list.na in my example above). If you are curious, the macro is https://github.com/deg/sodium/blob/master/src/sodium/macros.clj#L31-L43 I would love to see a nice way to do this without macros, but I don't see one. Meanwhile, my immediate problem was solved by forcing eval of the function symbol, so the open questions are just ones of elegance and education.

Not sure if reagent is to blame but compiling my code in any :simple and :advanced causes

TypeError: Cannot read property 'createFactory' of undefined

react.inc.js:2277 Warning: Accessing factories like React.DOM.noscript has been deprecated and will be removed in v16.0+. Use the react-dom-factories package instead.  Version 1.0 provides a drop-in replacement. For more info, see 

nevermind, see that this is caused by a plugin Im using react-modal