May 15, 2010
Midsummer, Mid-May, or, How Shall We Find the Concord of This Discord?
Like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I can gleek upon occasion. But tonight, for whatever reason, I’m in a serious mood, and I’d like to say some serious things: […]
May 4, 2010
Altered States
Ohio. I’m sitting inside an I-80 rest stop, not far from Kent. A headline in this morning’s USA Today: “A Teachable Moment at Kent State, 40 Years Later.” Does “teachable […]
April 23, 2010
Swarms of Cringers, Suckers, Doughfaces
A headline in today’s Times: “Whitman Wraps Up Calif. Fundraising Tour de Force.” About which I say: finally, finally! Let’s go to the campaign literature: Of all nations the United […]
April 11, 2010
Brooded & Loned in Denver
I’m in Paris on the Platte, which means I’m in Denver, which means I’m at the AWP Conference, which means I’ve been boomeranging from panel to reading to panel all […]
March 29, 2010
Poetry Hot Tub Time Machine
If you miss Kid ‘n Play and Red Dawn and cocaine, then, by all means, see Hot Tub Time Machine. I watched it this afternoon; I recommend it. But I […]
March 23, 2010
Covered, Baby
I’m going to bet that a fair number of visitors to this site don’t have health insurance. Writers move around a lot; they cobble together careers out of part-time work. […]
March 15, 2010
Shoulder to Shoulder, All That Jazz
Sometimes you do something and you have no idea, at the time, why you did it. For example, back in 1986, in Sarasota, Florida, I memorized John Berryman’s Dream Song […]
March 1, 2010
Short Circuit
This evening I watched the five Academy Award-nominated live-action short films for 2010 in Ann Arbor’s luminous Michigan Theater. The films come from across the globe: India, Denmark, Australia, Ireland, […]
February 19, 2010
The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, or, What We Want and Why We Want It
Lots of poets dream of publishing a poem in The New Yorker. And while I, too, would love for Paul Muldoon to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Yes, […]
February 6, 2010
Housekeeping: Six Things
Some Saturdays, when our apartment has barely survived the week’s wreckage, my partner-in-domestic-crime and I spend an hour or two on what we call “Six Things.” I suggest something (wash […]
January 27, 2010
In Uffish Thought
Humpty Dumpty preferred unbirthdays to birthdays. (There are more of them, you see. Or, as Humpty put it, “There’s glory for you!”) But on this side of the looking glass, […]
January 25, 2010
Late-January Laurels
A bit over a week ago, Carol Ann Duffy, the British Poet Laureate, jetted over the whale-road and touched down in Michigan. Her university summoners put her quickly to work: […]