In the Narrows Botanical Garden, as we came back from our morning walk along the Narrows to the Verrazano bridge, spring flower beds already wilting, but our favorite trees, the dawn redwood grove beginning to put forth new needles.
Having been asked about important poetry benchmarks of 1971 by Rachel Levitsky, the first two things that popped into mind were the death of Paul Blackburn, and the publication of a book that, for me, was a major entrance into the poetry and poetics of Robert Kelly, namely FLESH DREAM BOOK (Black Sparrow Press, o.p.). I pulled the book off the shelves to check the date and it was … Read more Oracles of Things Seen
Nicole suggested a walk before starting into the day as sun was out & the air clear & that would do the head good, as indeed it did, so after a week of small and large d & d (deaths and disasters), today some happiness r & d. Would of course have loved to jump into the waters of the Upper Bay, but the pollution is all too visible … Read more Easy, easy Friday morning…
CITY AS PILGRIMAGE (continued…) Even before the monastery, I happened on what struck me as peculiar, in this very ordinary neighborhood of dry cleaners and groceries and funeral parlors – an actual bookstore. The kind that sold used books. My treasures. The fact that most of the books were in German makes it clear now what it meant to have an educated lower middle class that read books. Germany … Read more Robert Kelly on Brooklyn (4 & final)
CITY AS PILGRIMAGE by Robert Kelly You don’t live in a city. You live across it. Or athwart it, or through it. You live through a city, and the routes of your travel are mapped by your own compulsions, infatuations, dreads. Your sense of identity, your sense of the task that lies before you, your work, the enterprise that the city will shape. Your whole nature … Read more Robert Kelly on Brooklyn (1)
Tomorrow, in Brooklyn! ¥ P R O S E P R O S … 3rd Season ¥ Pierre Joris and Sanjay Agnihotri SIDEWALK CAFÉ Thursday, December 3, 2009 Come early to get a seat & order from the terrific menu Reading starts at 6:30 p.m. sharp Sidewalk Café, 94 Avenue A at 6th Street, 212-473-7373 V or F to Second Avenue (exit at First Avenue) Pierre Joris—poet, editor, translator, … Read more Pierre Joris and Sanjay Agnihotri Reading
I’m teaching on Thursday evening here in Albany, otherwise I would be in New York at the opening of Susan Bee’s exhibition of recent paintings — the new work is stunning indeed: Susan Bee’s show opens todayReception Thursday 6-8at A.I.R. Gallery—>note new location in Brooklyn!
