What Came First
I was reading C.K. Williams’s book On WhitmanSeptember 2010And I scribbled on page 97 these three.. A NameAn AvowalA Maxim– Kelly McBride“You Are My Hero”Seven times down, eight times up The “Hero” referenceI’d first scribbled…
Category: Poets
Paradise and Inferno
The World War I poet Ivor Gurney wrote: “There are strange Hells within the minds War made.” If a new Vietnam War poem is ever written in America, it will be a descent into that…
With Gratitude for Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth, 100 Poems from the JapaneseNew Directions, 1964 Dear EJ Kenneth Rexroth—poet, polymath, anarchist, and pacifist—is a fine guide to Chinese and Japanese poetry. He provided six books of translation for the enrichment of…
Dylan’s Tweets
Yesterday I had lunch and spent some time with Andrew Ivers, a gentleman and a scholar, at Courtesy Diner on Hampton. Of course, we eventually came around to Bob Dylan, after Andrew gave me a…
Problematizing My Faves: A Conservative Remembers Allen Ginsberg
Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends: Falling out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer In a recent post, I acknowledged finally paying closer attention to the second precept of Thich…
Share the Wealth on Sunday 28 August: A Student, a Friend, a Teacher
“Appreciation is the sacrament.”—Allen Ginsberg Year after year, my understanding of “wealth” expands. I’ve been hosting these events for 10 years now, and it’s only today that it occurred to me to address the crucial…
Favorite Mary Oliver Poems
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention.Be astonished.Tell about it.–Mary Oliver, from “Sometimes” Laura …When I Am Among the Trees When I am among the trees,especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks…
Share the Wealth Sunday 31 July: Celebrating Mary Oliver
Last night in Our Good News class, Dianne Lee read Wild Geese to us. This led me to think it would be worthwhile to invite fans of Mary Oliver to do likewise this Sunday night:…
A Woman Who Is Part of the Proletariat of Billions of Artists
For Elizabeth Jane Burkemper This week I took a couple of days to read David Stephen Calonne’s new collection, Conversations with Dianne di Prima. In fall 2018, several friends and I explored di Prima in…