Line tamer.
I went with my friend Liz to the Chelsea Art Museum yesterday for the second performance in the “Notations 21” concert series. I guess the common thread of this exhibit and series is “innovative notation” where the musical notation itself is a work of art (see the above image) just as much as the music Read More …
I went to hear new friend Jennifer Kwon Dobbs read at the KGB Bar last night. The night was a celebration of new books by Jennifer, Tina Chang, and Tom Fink. Tom read first and invited his daughter up with him to read a series of 11 line poems. He then read primarily from his Read More …
Last night I went to see my roommate Richard Gallagher in the play Missivesby Garret Jon Groenveld. Richard plays Ben, a gay white man in apartment 102 who starts slipping letters to his neighbor, Lia (played by Shamika Cotton), an African-American woman in apartment 103. The gesture annoys Lia at first, (“what’s the difference between a Read More …
I heart the Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson. I was introduced to her work during grad school by my friend Suzanne Hancock (also from Canada and also an amazing poet; check out her Another Name for Bridge). I had heard much about Anne’s Autobiography of Red and Suzanne lent me her copy. I read it in Read More …
At first the method of repetition turned me off, but I soldiered on and halfway through I began to understand what Kincaid was up to and accept some of the repetition in the following ways: 1. A refrain or chorus that is repeated throughout, such as the repeating of Mr. Potter’s birth and death dates, Read More …
Happy Leap Day. So last night I attended the University of Michigan at Carnegie Hall concert thanks to some tickets from a new friend and colleague, Tom Wisniewski. We were in Box 1 on the first tier, practically part of the orchestra. I mused “this must be what it feels like to be Queen” as Read More …
A conversation started on GoodReads in response to my line “Remind me to destroy my fragments folder before I die” when I was commenting on Elizabeth Bishop’s Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, the volume of fragments and unpublished poems Alice Quinn put together. It’s funny, some would argue that if a writer really didn’t want Read More …
I heard Michael Palmer read back when I was studying at Michigan. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for him then (that happens, that writers speak to you at different points in your life, even certain books speak to you differently when you read them again at another time, in another space, at another place in your Read More …
I was re-reading Raw Goods Inventory after seeing Emily at AWP earlier this month and have two new favorite poems: “The Toy Divine(s)” and “Less Art, More Monkeys” (in addition to my old time favorites: “Elephant,” “At the Sushi Arcade,” the title poem, and “Even Before Your Elbow Knocked Over the Glass.”) I’m biased as Emily Read More …
I’m often refreshed by poets who can handle humor effortlessly, especially when they know how to balance their tonal range through sequencing, as Beth Anne does: at times the poems are subdued and deadpan in their humor, at times situational where much hinges on a fabulous last line, sort of like a punch line, but Read More …