J.D. Salinger. What can I say? He has meant more to me than any author, except maybe Jack Kerouac on his good days. I owe my literary “career,” such as it is (not to mention a certain long-winded writing style), to Catcher In the Rye and Buddy Glass. I know I’m not the only crumby [...]
Browsing the archives for the writing category
28 Jan 10
3 Jan 10
A complete archive of The Paris Review’s in-depth interviews with the 20th century’s greatest authors and poets. Luminous. Essential reading if you’re a writer.
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Posted in poetry, writing
24 Dec 09
This morning I began a poem on Hamid Ramouz -
soldier, scholar, desert explorer -
who died by his own hand, gunshot, at eighty-eight.
I had tried to read the dictionary entry on that curious man
to my son – we were after something on Raleigh -
but he was impatient, and rightly so.
It happened months ago, the boy is [...]
10 Dec 09
I’m still working my way, slowly but surely, through volume one of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way. As expected the book’s plot (I’m assuming there will be something of a plot sometime soon) develops at a glacial pace, however Proust has announced his themes of time, memory, dream, and epiphany clearly and quickly. [...]
20 Nov 09
10 Aug 09
Somehow my first copy of Stanley Kunitz’s Collected Works had gone missing, as books are wont to do sometimes. So I was happy to find a nice fresh copy waiting for me on the Half Price Books poetry shelf. I like Kunitz quite a bit because he seems like a simple man. His poetry is [...]
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Posted in first and last, monsters of poetry, poemosity, poetry, writing
Tagged stanley kunitz
Tagged stanley kunitz
3 Aug 09
While his body,
hands, hair, toes, lips, nose
sense the world directly -
kiss a thigh, cradle a body in the arms
wriggle in the bushy grass
play with the wind that
blows cool out of the north
scent gun smoke as
buckshot drops the duck from the sky
prickle on the straw chaff
run a hand through the purple alfalfa flowers
or the girl’s blond [...]
31 Jul 09
Sometimes when you’re loud, playing loud music, laughing and chatting…and then you’re quiet for a moment…you hear the wind’s picked up out through the open window…and the rain has started – just barely. And then the wind jumps up, beating against the open pane and tossing the blinds, and the rain comes heavier, and heavier, [...]
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Posted in prose, writing
19 Jul 09
I thought it would be a fun experiment to post the first and last poems in a particular poet’s “collected works” edition. I guess in my mind posting the first poem – and by first I mean oldest, and by oldest I mean when the poet was at his youngest – and last poem will [...]
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Posted in baseball, first and last, monsters of poetry, poemosity, poetry, style, writing
Tagged donald hall
Tagged donald hall
9 Jun 09
I’ve been trying this week to conjure up some recollections of my Granddad, who passed away on Saturday. It’s hard, however, to work up so many old memories in such a short time, and my mind seems to keep latching on to just a few things. The moment I try to take one memory and [...]
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