Line tamer.
I stole this off Aimee’s shelf while I was cleaning her room this weekend. A favorite line: “After all…who is the greater artist, he who imagines the marvelous transformation, or he who marvelously transforms himself?” I often think something similar when I fantasize about my favorite superheroes…would I rather write their lives and stories, or Read More …
I took Greg along to Phil Levine’s 80th Birthday Tribute at The Great Hall at Cooper Union last night (and he took me to a great sushi bar afterward! Double win!). Another packed house, just like at the Galway Kinnell tribute earlier this year. The proceedings were filled with the usual humor that surrounds a Read More …
Thursday night Greg and I went to see Margaret Cho in her Sensuous Womanvariety show. It was wonderfully raunchy and has deepened my fascination of the burlesque. Lots of nudity and pasties and subversive behavior (the rap “I’m not a homo-sexual, I’m a sexual homo” will stick in your head all night). Loved Dirty Martini’s America Read More …
I picked up this book after reading the first poem (which is rare for me, to have something leap out in such a way) and after noticing a nice list of “notes” at the back (nothing like a well-researched book of poems in conversation with other sources to whet my appetite), and finished it in Read More …
Picked this up in City Lights over the weekend and read it on the plane home today. I was a bit disappointed by both her and the afterword by Mark. Not their best work on the subject of politics and poetry. Still this passage did stuck with me: “I hope never to idealize poetry–it has Read More …
Finally finished this. I picked it up months ago when I decided to write my beast fable/bestiary. As a kid I was obsessed with “The Bremen Town Musicians” which we had on vinyl and to which I would listen over and over again. After studying the tale I decided to read all 99o-some pages of Read More …
I heard Derek Walcott read at the 92nd St Y last night (and ran into some poets from NYU I met at Calabash back in May, including Dante Micheaux). The British poet Glyn Maxwell introduced Walcott, and I have to say Maxwell gave one of the best introductions I’ve ever heard. His homage to the Read More …
I saw the new opera Margaret Garner last night at New York City Opera, popping my opera cherry here in New York (long overdue given how long I’ve lived here). The opera’s libretto was written by Toni Morrison and the music was composed by Richard Danielpour. Morrison based her famous novelBeloved on the historical events concerning Read More …
Aimee recommended this to me months ago and I bought it back in the spring but just finally picked it up. God, what a heart-wrenching story set against the very real and disturbing 1937 Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic where tens of thousands of Haitians were slaughtered. Almost missed my subway stop a few Read More …
I was disappointed in this “last” book (did I read somewhere that he claimed this would be his last poetry collection?) if anything for its self-indulgence. Just when I couldn’t handle another scene of light likened to some painter, he parenthetically breaks in and makes fun of himself for his knack for making such a Read More …