January 2012
1 post
W. W. Norton: The Obligation to Be Happy  →
The Obligation to Be Happy It is more onerous than the rites of beauty or housework, harder than love. But you expect it of me casually, the way you expect the sun to come up, not in spite of rain or clouds but because of them. And so I smile, as if my own fidelity to sadness were a hidden vice— that downward tug on my mouth, my old suspicion that health and love are brief irrelevancies, no more...
Jan 10th
145 notes
December 2011
2 posts
“I pity nonsense, because until now it has been so neglected in the making of...”
– (Kurt Schwitters. from Merz)
Dec 29th
4 notes
“My recent feeling is that poetry is nothing more (or less) than the attempt to...”
– Brandon Shimoda
Dec 16th
November 2011
2 posts
Nov 27th
16 notes
from The Stars That Come Before The Night
iv. / by Ana Bozicenic  If the sign on the door signals to the passer-by that the store is OPEN, does the other side of the sign tell those inside the store that the world is CLOSED? Close up shop, put world back in business. This poem is called The Mystery of Commerce.
Nov 22nd
October 2011
6 posts
WatchWatch
Detail of Louise Seamster’s amazing extra-illustrated book in action!
Oct 30th
Oct 27th
7 notes
WatchWatch
“how weird it is that some people have normal lives and some people have very sad lives and then some people are Spike Jonze.” (thanks Louise)
Oct 25th
Oct 19th
16 notes
“It used to be that if you wanted to be subversive and radical, you’d publish on...”
– Kenneth Goldsmith from this believer interview
Oct 5th
2 notes
“What are names for a sloping outside cellar door?” “What do you call the kind of...”
– HUMANITIES article on dialectology and the Dictionary of American Regional English.
Oct 3rd
September 2011
2 posts
“he finds poetry most beautiful when it’s quoted in prose—line breaks...”
– I interview Ben Lerner for the Poetry Society website.
Sep 15th
Sep 8th
2 notes
August 2011
2 posts
“We know that having two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We...”
– From an article about Facebook by smartypants Zadie Smith
Aug 28th
1 note
5 tags
almost all the way / w4m / 28 / A to Far Rockaway →
I wrote THIS fictional craigslist missed connection for Brett’s blog, Ships that Pass, and it got one hilarious, real response. Check it out.
Aug 25th
7 notes
July 2011
1 post
Jul 22nd
48 notes
June 2011
1 post
2 tags
Jun 17th
April 2011
5 posts
7 tags
Apr 25th
13 notes
3 tags
Nothing pleases me
  Nothing pleases me the traveler on the bus says—Not the radio or the morning newspaper, nor the citadels on the hills. I want to cry / The driver says: Wait until you get to the station, then cry alone all you want / A woman says: Me too. Nothing pleases me. I guided my son to my grave, he liked it and slept there, without saying goodbye / A college student says: Nor does anything please...
Apr 24th
3 notes
1 tag
Thank you, poetry.
noideasbut: Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
Apr 21st
1 tag
Apr 21st
Apr 10th
61 notes
March 2011
6 posts
4 tags
Mar 25th
1 note
3 tags
ListenReblogging this because its the easiest way for me...
Mar 16th
30 notes
1 tag
A Hole to See the Ocean Through →
Dispatches from a drifting polar vessel. an incredible lyric essay by Ellie Ga in the newest edition of Triple Canopy. Also one of the most beautifully formatted pieces of writing I’ve ever seen on the internet!
Mar 16th
6 tags
When did the poems get written?
“One of the most startling things about Frank in the period when I first knew him was his ability to write a poem when other people were talking, or even to get up in the middle of a conversation, get his typewriter, and write a poem, sometimes participating in the conversation while doing so. This may sound affected when I describe it, but it wasn’t so at all. The poems he wrote in...
Mar 8th
19 notes
4 tags
“When I think about blogging I think about this Bill Murray quote about how...”
– Molly Lambert, about making the stuff that later may turn out to be art
Mar 6th
4 tags
“I have a lot of stolen goods in the poems. So much has been stolen—women’s...”
– From this amazing interview with my teacher Hoa Nguyen on Evening Will Come, a beautiful online publication I think I have raved about before….
Mar 3rd
2 notes
February 2011
11 posts
1 tag
LetterMpress: A Virtual Letterpress on Your iPad →
check. it. out.
Feb 26th
5 tags
Feb 26th
3 notes
3 tags
“When the point of reading is remembering, you approach a text very differently...”
– Memory Athletes and the history of their sport in this week’s NYT
Feb 21st
5 tags
More Michael Robbins! →
I have few legs. I sleep on meat. I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/01/12/090112po_poem_robbins#ixzz1EH8GxZBx
Feb 20th
1 note
4 tags
Hey it's Michael Robbins discovery and... →
Feb 19th
6 tags
Michael Robbins continues to impress! "The boys... →
My fish, fast and loose, shoot fish in a kettle.The boys like the girls who like heavy metal.On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom,on Motörhead, Leppard, and Zeppelin, and Mayhem …
Feb 18th
5 tags
I just discovered (in plain sight! in POETRY... →
Feb 18th
6 tags
Feb 18th
3 tags
Feb 16th
16 notes
5 tags
Gary Shteyngart? - w4m - 26 (L Train at 6th Ave) →
Feb 6th
1 note
7 tags
“I’m both a lawyer and a poetry critic, so asking me to discuss this book would...”
– From this David Orr essay which, truth be told, I haven’t finished yet. It’s long.
Feb 4th
January 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Speaking in code
As is the case with all my friends who work in the realm of numbers and computers, I harbor secret feelings that they may speak in binary code in their apartment (“010110?” “11010!”), and use English around me merely as a courtesy. When they do speak English, it’s a contemporary patois — a combination of real English and something out of a Vista manual. W: So...
Jan 19th
4 tags
Jan 7th
8 tags
“I know the adjective can be a nuisance, and the adverb clumsy. I’m a touch sick...”
– O go read this essay by C. D. Wright. It’s just been posted on the gorgeous new website Evening Will Come, which features a new essay each month in a lovely, storybook format.
Jan 5th
December 2010
10 posts
5 tags
“So I went out into the street and breathed the air of Santiago with a vague...”
– Three amazing sentences from By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolano (trans Chris Andrews)
Dec 30th
Dec 22nd
Dec 22nd
Dec 22nd
7 tags
Cento (from the 2009-07-16 Cable from Karl...
I was able to refocus the conversation as we discussed commitment to continuing our close partnership I outlined what the I seeking from the relationship: meaningful progress, security, sanctuary, investment. Karzai agreed there had been a dramatic reduction in efforts. I welcomed such a statement, noting a recent engagement. It was clear even at that time, trouble was brewing. I took issue with a...
Dec 19th
16 notes
7 tags
Scientific Journalism Poem
When Wikileaks enters my dream, it doesn’t look like the planet melting into a new formation. Information is a cloud, which keeps spelling the readable characters: the faces. Reporters say Julian looks even paler and more tired. I understand this. Bradley Manning in spending 23 hours a day in solitary while his photo is everywhere, smiling. He’s been a model detainee for seven months on a...
Dec 16th
5 tags
Questions for the Cloud
(rough draft)   Q Is there some law against sharing something somebody tells you if somebody else would be interested?   Q What if every someone was a government?   Q Mister government, can I call you somebody, the way you insist on calling your every secret email a cable?   Q Is it a secret what makes the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network secret?   Q Are the routers underground with...
Dec 14th
Great review of THE DORY READER in @Hydramag! →
Dec 13th