…from NY Chronicles 2001 September 11 Tuesday morning was sunny and fresh, a lovely autumn day that made me happy to be alive as I walked to work at the Island School a few blocks away. I’d been given a … Continue reading
Yearly Archives: 2010
Bill Kushner reading Quack
… Last Saturday, September 4, when the traffic got too noisy at Saint Mark’s, Bill and I walked a few blocks across 14th Street to Stuyvesant Park, on the west side of Second Avenue, sat down on a bench where … Continue reading
The Storm: Creation of a Poem
… In Wuhan, China, summer of 2008, one stormy evening after my poetry workshop, Richard, a young scientist majoring in Physics, offered to walk me back to the hotel sharing his umbrella in the pouring rain as we made it … Continue reading
Crossing the Yangtze
… It rained constantly the first two weeks I was in Wuhan. Luckily for me, the university goes up the side of a mountain and the flooding happened below. Many people were very unlucky however: property was destroyed and lives … Continue reading
Bernadette Mayer’s Tomorrow: writing in the future
… I admire a poem by Bernadette Mayer called “Tomorrow.” It’s from a book of hers called Scarlet Tanager. The poem is a good prompt to get my ESL students writing about the future and the conditional. In the poem … Continue reading
Forget: Beautiful thoughts simply expressed
… Beautiful thoughts aren’t always pretty and neither are beautiful words. At the poetry workshop this summer at Wuhan I’d show two short poems by Alice Notley that were simple to understand. Here is one of them. After Tsang Chih … Continue reading
Noodles
… This trip to Wuhan I managed to eat some very good meals when in the company of my colleague, the indefatigable searcher for the real thing, Luke Amoroso. Luke knows where all the good food is. We had some … Continue reading
The Great Wall & Summer Palace on the Way to Wuhan: 7/9/10
… I worked with some great teachers this summer at Wuhan University. We taught American Cultural Studies, getting to Wuhan on Saturday, July 10, setting up our homerooms Sunday, and starting to teach two classes a day on Monday. Talk … Continue reading
The Forbidden City: July 8, 2010
… July 8th was the first day I was in Beijing with all my teachers colleagues getting to know everybody. They would turn out to be a great faculty, good intelligent spirits, experienced travelers with no drama. Tiananmen Square and … Continue reading
My Brother by Yu
… A class of mine did great speeches. The speech I liked the best was given by a young man named Yu who is so nervous that when he speaks his right hand is clenched in a fist and his … Continue reading
Hai Zi translated by Liu
… Liu is an English major who helped us American faculty out at the hotel on the campus at Wuhan University by making life easier with quick thoughtful attention. And he was kind enough to do a translation of the … Continue reading
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… “Today and tomorrow is all we have. Yesterday, no matter what some will say is gone,” I write, but as soon as I do the wall I’m leaning on says, “I will still be here when you’ve gone. Yesterdays … Continue reading