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 … Continue reading →

Laura Cronk reads from Ghost Hour @KGB Monday Night Poetry

11 Mar ’21

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 Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock read by T. S. Eliot

6 Mar ’21

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 →

Inauguration Poems, 1/21/21, curated by Dorothy Friedman

5 Mar ’21

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 reads Feeling Fucked Up

19 Feb ’21

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 →

A Kiss and a Sonnet

13 Feb ’21

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! https://vimeo.com/512038274 219 I want … Continue reading →

Charles Bernstein reads from The Lives of the Toll Takers

3 Feb ’21

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 →

Winter Paintings by Joan Eardley

19 Jan ’21

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 … Continue reading →

The Prologue

2 Jan ’21

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 … Continue reading →

Francine Witte reads some Charley Poems

27 Dec ’20

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) … Continue reading →

Sparrow reads from Small Happiness and Other Epiphanies

9 Dec ’20

It’s the little things, the good word, the bon mot that come down to us. “Festina lente,” the Emperor August used to say: “Hurry slowly.” Words I try to live by. Other words to try to live by can … Continue reading →

The 17th Annual Brevitas Reading

29 Nov ’20

It has been several years now since Tom Savage asked me to become a member of Brevitas, an online poetry group that posts fourteen line poems, or shorter, twice a month, on the first and the fifteenth. It is … Continue reading →