Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works Translated by Paul Schmidt And so I come back to the boy-genius, enfant terrible whose Illuminations I bought while at Bellarmine (under the influence of a Kerouac whose words I enjoyed…
Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling, editors, Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School Rereading this collection after many years, I’m struck by the following perspectives from various writers I noted then and that still…
More than a decade ago, octogenarian Jesuit felon Daniel Berrigan spoke at the local Jesuit university (in the auditorium of the business school, no less). During the Q & A, a friend of mine asked…
Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet, edited by Milton Hindus National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, 1984 Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing…
I first learned of Gary Snyder through Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums, where he was fictionalized as “Japhy Ryder,” who, according to Alvah Goldbook [aka Allen Ginsberg], was “a great new hero of American…
After coming across this acknowledgement of influence, a goal for this spring–re-engaging with Tolstoy.
I’ve read Anne Waldman since 2001 (Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays got me started). Her epics, poems, interviews, and edited anthologies (from the Kerouac School at Naropa) stimulate and open up possibilities. One of…
Friends, I highly recommend Jason’s novel–here’s a blurb I wrote for it… “Religious texts aver that to save one life is akin to saving the entire world. The beauty of Jason Makansi’s novel is in…
Years ago, I read with pleasure Goethe’s Maxims and Reflections (translated by Elisabeth Stopp). A good number of them are worth revisiting, much like many of those I’ve encountered over the years from La Rochefoucauld,…
Jessie Sandova, From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal (Counterpoint Press, 2017) I had initial high hopes for reading the correspondence of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal. I started…