Share the Wealth: Summer Writing Class 2018
The unexamined life is not worth living. —Socrates I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. —Alice Walker Tell me, what is…
Tag: Walt Whitman
One Thing Leads to Another
Z studied with meIn a Social Justice class fall 2007 I learned that semesterHow much Z loved poetry They kept a notebook of new wordsThey’d come across and then make the words a part of…
Om Satyam Shivam Sundaram
If you’ve ever … put your faith in a guru traveled to India and were blown away and never took a single drug recited a mantram throughout the day memorized part of chapter 2 of…
15 Reasons You Might Reconsider Your Boycott of Me and Resume Communication at Some Point in 2007 (But There Isn’t Any Reason to Rush or Anything)
I reminded you of Whitman, told you to read him BEFORE the morning news avalanche of expected accounts of horrific rapacities and Bush Administration deceptions and delusions, because we are larger, better than I thought;…
A Little Pushkin Can Go a Long Way
My friend is assiduous in learning Russian Her son and daughter-in-law reside in Saint Petersburg She’s headed there in May She tells me she needs to get a book of Pushkin Memorize some of his…
After Reading Justin Kaplan’s Walt Whitman: A Life
July 2005 It was one month ago that I began to read Whitman in earnest, and, while I still have far to go in prose and poetry, an impression has been made, a fire has…
Thesis 11, Still
One reader of an early draft of Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Wrote me with characteristic candor: “Damn you! It fucking hurt to read this book And thank you! It was the final push I…
On Susan Sontag, Trip to Hanoi
Journal, July 2005 Susan Sontag spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1968, and wrote 90 pages about her experiences. (Perhaps I will cull from those notebooks I kept in Gaza and the West Bank…
Good News
My good news is I’m still employed My good news is I have loads of work that isn’t for pay My good news is I get to meet ordinary, fascinating people like the ones at…
From Walt through Me to You
Allons! the road is before us! It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well. Allons! be not detain’d! Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the…