The Writing Life/1

At My Wake, Someone Will Hear Someone Else Say… “He was always telling me to share my writing…” “You, too? He said that to me, like… weekly!” “Weekly? He’d badger me daily for a fortnight…

A Love Letter to Grief by Jessi Dyer

Grief you motherfucker, You robber of joy, You thief in the night, Stealing and killing. Burning my village to the ground. Grief, you backpack full of rocks, You unrelenting burden I bear Just when I…

Putting Marginalia to Use

for Danielle Mackey Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces 31 Saturday October 2009 I reread this book for one reason:  To see if it could help me generate some ideas as to form and content…

“Action Needed, Goethean Action”

Allen Ginsberg, Journals: Mid-Fifties 1954-1958, edited by Gordon Ball During winter and spring of 1996 I went on a binge of poet Allen Ginsberg’s books: poems, letters, photos, journals (I was taking a break from…

Reading Roth on Writing and Reading

George Searles, editor, Conversations with Philip Roth Literary Conversation Series University Press of Mississippi 1992 I settled in this morning with a collection of interviews with Philip Roth, from the bright beginning of his career…

“If Not You, Who?”

Having recently read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, I thought of Marcel Proust’s Time Regained, volume 7 in his In Search of Lost Time. 1. As for the inner book of unknown symbols……