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MODERNISM, OR COLLAPSE-CHIC
Joyce, Pound, QUINN, Ford Madox Ford, Paris 1923 John Quinn (1870-1924) attorney for Pound and Eliot, modern art collector, and the guy who made the Armory Show (1913) happen, is a neglected but...
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WHY THE BENGALS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL
Joe Burrow of the NFL. The next Tom Brady? The NFL is a corporate product which is sold on a continual basis by a set of very wealthy owners. The NFL does not own any players or teams; private...
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IS THERE MORE FOR ME TOMORROW?
The philosopher in me sat back yesterday and thought: everything is involuntary; laughter, sighs, our short lives. How am I voluntary, then? Is this freedom mine, or illusion again and again and...
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WERE IT PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE PURE MUSICAL SOUNDS
Were it permissible to make pure musical sounds in poetry, I would. A prelude of notes would greet the reader; I think this would be good. How could I pull it off? The sounds of speech resemble in...
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THE WARMING SEA
The warming sea shrugs off its ice undulating faintly in its thinness this morning in the harbor. I jog in the wharf's receding snow. Spring lives in all the months; December was warm, especially by...
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THOMAS
Who am I, when I’m being myself? A guy with a funny face who laughs too much, a dude who interrupts and talks too much, one who intoxicates himself with half-truths, whose thoughts wander when he’s...
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EVERYONE I KNEW
Everyone I knew was proud of their race but didn’t think much of their father. If their fiction was disgusting, this was much worse than if it was disturbing. As far as their actual person, it was...
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EMBARRASSING A COMMUNITY OF POETS
Beware communities that swarm. Those millions who attend to music as contemporary ritual only, for instance, but have little, or no, musical taste. Or a community of that kind of poet who struggles...
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THE INSULT NEVER GIVEN
The insult never given, the one never spoken to you and the ones you love is the true one, isn’t it? That’s the one that gets you—the one that’s never spoken. It’s the one so obvious it is never seen—...
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THE WORLD IS SO COMPLEX AND VAST
The world is so complex and vast, how can one thing matter? How does anger, revenge, or love cohere? When so much is intricately elsewhere and so little is actually here? Remember how the big...
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RESET
In one of those dives on Massachusetts Avenue I put my Auden down, next to my cold beer, as one of those crackpots, old, disheveled, “ha ha! poetry doesn’t belong here!” has come to annoy me, unknown...
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PRACTICAL
Today leaders are focused on the practical, which might include war. They don’t care what the news says and fine old English poems are spoiled in retrospect by American slang. Double meanings wherever...
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PLEASURE
“If we were on Mars, /we’d watch comets falter across the Nile-green sky from our lawn chairs” —Andreea Iulia Scridon You send me your poetry, hoping I'll like it, and I will, because I'm a student of...
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THEATER 1 DEMOCRACY 0
The people are confused. The actor dictator has made sure war is what everyone wants. Each side cheers for war by turns. We call out fools in ways that make us fools because the secrecy of the theater...
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TIME DOES NOT EXIST
Time does not exist—except in these words read one after the other: the pianist arriving, sitting down to play, and playing. Time does not…what was I saying? The father announcing, “I’ll take your...
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WHY AM I SATISFIED WITH EVERYTHING, YET WRITING A POEM?
I heard there must be resolution, implied or otherwise, even in the slightest poem. The light must traverse the sand in the humblest haiku or no one will stir. Conflict that went before contributes,...
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IN THE DEEP SILENCE OF MIDNIGHT
In the deep silence of midnight— this ringing in my ears, as if the world will never shut up. Look! I have mentioned the world— the world poets constantly invoke in their pathetic attempts to be...
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LIFE IS A DREAM IN WHICH YOU DO WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DO
What can you do? Accidents happen. That guy’s a jerk. Once a darling girl, an overweight young woman drags herself to work. But more than that, for everyone this is true: Life is a dream in which you...
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THE TOOTHBRUSH
If I asked Rimbaud and Mazer, “Are things alive?” I’m sure they would say, yes. But if Baudelaire heard them, he would say, “I don’t care.” And so all philosophy depends on the wit and timing of...
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WHAT DO YOU WANT THE STORY TO BE?
What do you want the story to be? That men are bad and you are not free? That good needs luck and eternity? Does it matter? Your political philosophy? Do you know how good you are? Comparatively? Do...
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