I go to my spot. It’s my spot though it’s everyone’s. It’s everyone’s though it’s really just mine. Because I say so. Because I believe the rocks, the trees, the birds, the clouds all speak for me. They are my eyes and ears and voice. Voices. Plural times plural. So close to infinity, but not quite. Again, because that is my thinking and I don’t really want to take the easy way out. The easy way out would be to…
Watch this video on YouTube Nick Drake’s Day is Done The good die young. A cliche, a myth, a bromide, but sometimes all too true. Nick Drake died of an overdose of amitriptyline at the age of 27 in 1974. He left us great music, deeply felt. Rich in melancholy, nostalgia, autumns and rain, Drake sang of the pain of existence shyly, but with great care. He cared about caring. He cared about folk music, Dylan and Phil Ochs,…
A couple of recent movies got me to think again about Rimbaud and his effects. Movies have a funny way of doing that to me. They often make me think about writers, artists, and musicians, even if the movie isn’t really about them. Oblique references stimulate a new ordering, a new attempt to find links, connections, similarities. Hopefully new connections. New patterns. New orderings of anxiety and influence. Sometimes, they don’t even mention this or that artist, but they send…
It looks like we should be picking up steam in early April, with new poetry, essays and fiction. To celebrate Barbara Guest’s forth-coming Collected Poetry, I will be posting some essays about her work and life. A remarkable poet, she deserves a much wider readership and far more recognition. Current books of note: Reading Carmen Laforet’s Nada, a very fine coming of age novel, set in Barcelona. Recently finished William Everdell’s The First Moderns. Brilliant overview of the people and…