Category Archives: American Poets

If I Told Him: A Complete Portrait of Picasso

… I wanted to make a video poem out of the Caedmon recording of Gertrude Stein reciting If I Told Him. In late May, shortly before it closed, I saw the Stein show at the Met and filmed some of … Continue reading →

The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost

28 Apr ’12

… Was Robert Frost chained resolutely to the laws of metrics? “Iamb the iamb,” he said. As strictly as The Tuft of Flowers sticks to form (couplets of iambic pentameter), in the reading Frost changes words: the instead of a … Continue reading →

The Waste Land

21 Apr ’12

….. In 1968 at the age of 19, I was waiting for inspiration’s kiss when I was supposed to be the one doing the kissing, but I didn’t know that until I found The Waste Land on a dusty shelf … Continue reading →

Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay

27 Feb ’12

… Today, Monday, February 22, Edna St. Vincent Millay, had she lived, would have been 124. I was a little over a year old when she died. In my youth I swear I read somewhere that she had a heart … Continue reading →

Harlem by Langston Hughes

16 Feb ’12

… On the R subway platform going north at Whitehall Street there is a girder whose peeling paint looked to me like a camel; it inspired me to recite Harlem by Langston Hughes although you won’t get to Harlem riding … Continue reading →

Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop

28 Oct ’11

… … Sandpiper The roaring alongside he takes for granted, and that every so often the world is bound to shake. He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake. … Continue reading →

Corso, Keats and Shelley

21 Sep ’11

… One night after a poetry reading, Gregroy Corso and I argued about who was the better poet, Shelley or Keats. Gregory thought Shelley was better because according to him Shelley represented the Romantic ideal more perfectly than Keats did. … Continue reading →