… … Children Planting Marigolds in La Plaza, May 20001 I just came from La Plaza where I planted marigolds with kids from the day care Sheltering Arms. First we looked for the frog at the fish pond, but the frog could not be found. The children in a growing loud chorus called, “Ribbit! Ribbit!…
I’d been wanting to get Rachel Blau DuPlessis on my blog for a long time. In Philly at Temple University in the mid-seventies where I was studying Latin, French and Spanish, I heard her read a sparrow poem inspired by Catullus that has always stuck with me. Finally, via Zoom, a few weeks ago,…
… I got Mark Statman’s translation of Never Made In America a year ago just as my life became so full of commitments (I began to take care of my ailing old father) that I had no time to sit down and read. I have a working knowledge of Spanish, but as I think about…
… One of the great love stories is the marriage of Spanish poets, Zenobia Camprubí and Juan Ramón Jiménez. This poem by Jiménez is sublime and fluid while my translation doggy paddles. Focus on the Spanish. … [narrowcolumn side=”left”] Mar Ideal Los dos vamos nadando -agua de flores o de hierro- por nuestras dobles vidas….
In April, LiVE MAG! with its new issue, Number 21, presented John Godfrey with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tompkins Square Library. The featured readers celebrating John were Elinor Nauen, Andrei Codrescu, Lila Dlaboha, Shelley Miller, Ilke Scobie, and Harris Schiff. You can hear them all in the Vimeo below. Enjoy. …
Many people may think of Star Black as a photographer who has documented NYC downtown art and literary events. She also curated the Monday Night Poetry Readings at KGB Bar beginning in 1997, an event that has been going on non stop for a quarter of a century. Even during the pandemic, the readings…
… Patsy Margolin, a country singer, a student of Ravi Shankar, and a colleague of mine in the beginning fight to save the community park and garden, La Plaza Cultural, which led to the bigger battle of saving all community gardens in NYC, gave me a book of Art Young cartoons that I cherish and…
…Taking a short cut through Los Campos on my way from Avenue C to 14th Street, hurrying from one place to another, from home to a park bench actually to sit on and read some poetry, I saw a puddle of water, left after yesterday’s rain, still there in testament to how heavy it had…
Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of reading with Lee Ann Brown, Johnny Stanton, and Anne Waldman at Bowery Poetry. The poems I read and a recording of my reading follow. I am working on a Vimeo of the whole reading, which will soon follow. Until then, enjoy. for John Keats I think that…
… Shortly after the New Year, to get the new year going, I went over to Chelsea to video Dean Kostos in his apartment reading from his new book, THIS IS NOT A SKYSCRAPER, published by Red Hen Press. I’d been wanting to do this for awhile because I’d read the book and enjoyed the…
… Scarlet Tanager is a favorite book of mine because it was the first book Bernadette Mayer published after her stroke, and as I read it I knew that she could still write a poem. I went upstate to visit her a little while ago and she agreed that she also liked Scarlet Tanager. I…
