T.S. Eliot converted to Christianity and joined the Anglican Church in 1927, a man with no faith now having to find some. Perhaps his faith was already there, the faith, at least, that if he put a pencil to paper, he would create a […]
Category Archives: Odds and Ends
Charles Bernstein reads from Near/Miss
I am a slow reader and come to a lot of books slowly too, but if you live long enough, as I seem to be doing—so far, so good—good books, or books that I enjoy do come. Such a one has been Near/Miss by […]
Laura Cronk reads from Ghost Hour @KGB Monday Night Poetry
I was very moved listening to Laura Cronk read from her most recent book, Ghost Hour. Her childhood and my childhood have similarities. Although she grew up in Indiana and I grew up in Pennsylvania, I could relate. Her poems were like seeing an […]
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock read by T. S. Eliot
The first poem that anybody reads who must read something by T. S. Eliot—I think of high school teenagers—is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Perhaps, like those who first read it, the poem is young. Many people love it. Its Michelangelo couplet, […]
Inauguration Poems, 1/21/21, curated by Dorothy Friedman
For this past January’s inauguration, after so much stress beforehand including armed insurrection, Dorothy Friedman gathered some poet friends together the day after the official celebration for a Zoom poetry reading. This reading is captured below on the Vimeo and some of the poets […]
Etheridge Knight reads Feeling Fucked Up
Etheridge Knight wrote some great poems, up there with the best of them. He mastered an African American oral tradition called the Toast. The improvisations of Rap today are a continuation of that tradition, and like the Blues with its roots in the work […]
A Kiss and a Sonnet
Last year I sent out a few Valentines, my poem “In the Circle,” and one came back with a kiss. Those lips are Shelley Kraut’s. Here’s to love, everybody. Mmmmwwahhhh! 219 I want to write something about you butI’m […]
Charles Bernstein reads from The Lives of the Toll Takers
In the Vimeo below, Charles Bernstein reads part of a poem from his book, Dark City that he made for his friend Li Zhimin, a poet and professor at Guangzhou University in China. The excerpt was selected by Li for his anthology Reading Poetry […]
Winter Paintings by Joan Eardley
Joan Eardley painted children in the slums of Glasgow and then lived in Catterline, a fishing village nobody went to. She found beauty in the often shabby common present. It is what I admire about her. The paintings below were painted in Catterline on […]
The Prologue
What better way to start than at the beginning. These will be the first poems in my new book, Fucking and Other Poems, which will be published soon by Indolent Books. Till then Enjoy. words are birds eye is sky […]
Francine Witte reads some Charley Poems
I’ve heard Francine Witte read her Charley poems on several occasions, and I’ve always enjoyed them, so it had been on my mind to ask her to read them for the blog. Charley is a man (the many men) the poet has dated, and […]
Hound Dog
Hound Dog, a twelve-bar blues by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, was first recorded by Willie Mae Thornton on August 13, 1952 in Los Angeles. I, whose birthday was on August 15, would have been turning three at the time, and have no recollection […]
