158 Like the dried up dead wasp with its venom gone rolled up on the windowsill like a ball of dust my mother slumbers with her head bent near a bowl of fruit Pat Maples sent listening … Continue reading
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158 Like the dried up dead wasp with its venom gone rolled up on the windowsill like a ball of dust my mother slumbers with her head bent near a bowl of fruit Pat Maples sent listening … Continue reading
In October Wayne Koestenbaum read at the Segue Reading Series at Artists Space in Cortlandt Alley, right off Canal. Lonely Christopher, the curator and host, introduced him, and is letting me include his introduction here. His introductions are so well-read … Continue reading
On Saturday October 17 there was a reading at the Moore Homestead Playground in Elmhurst, Queens in celebration of Paolo Javier’s new book, O.B.B. (The Original Brown Boy), hot off the presses, published by Nightboat Books. A lively group … Continue reading
On Monday night, November 1, I went to KGB to hear some poetry. Jonathan Wells was the featured reader. I didn’t know his work (there is a lot I don’t know) so when he got to the microphone, I was … Continue reading
T.S. Eliot joined the Anglican Church in 1927, a man of no faith who wanted to find some. Perhaps the faith was already there, the faith, at least, that if he put a pencil to paper, he would create … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading