#AmericanWriters
for Jim Cummins In Iowa, Jim dreamed that Della… twin. Dave drew a comic strip call… about a bearded beer-guzzler in Su… like Wallace Stevens
The bloom was off the economic rec… “I just want to know one thing,” s… What was that one thing? He’ll ne… Because at just that moment he hea… Of broken glass in the bathroom, a…
for J.A., December 3, 1975 Ashes that survive the aftermath o… Bury the past bravely, retaining Only those messages that are least… And therefore most desirable
We were smoking some of this knock… Operation Memory was announced. T… Each soldier went, counting backwa… With a needle in his arm. And the… Of a recession, in the middle of a…
It’s my birtday I’ve got an empty stomach and the desire to be lazy in the hammock and maybe go for a cool swim on a hot day with the trombone in Sinatra’s
Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went… tear, wanting to look like a moll in a Chandler novel. Dinner, cons… and one part lime juice cordial, w… There are, she said, poems that ca…
What is it about the Abyss that tempts the young poet to kiss the air and head for the nearest c… unreasonable attachment to the bli… of falling—what accounts for it? U…
I like walking on streets as black… now, at two in the solemnly musica… in this town emptied of Lestrygoni… is asleep or trying or worrying wh… they aren’t asleep, while unknown…
We have too much exhibitionism and not enough voyeurism in poetry we have plenty of bass and not enough treble, more amber beer than the frat boys can drink…
Can’t swim; uses credit cards and… intolerable feelings of inadequacy… Won’t admit his dread of boredom,… numerous marital infidelities; Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés…
When she says Margarita she means… When she says quixotic she means m… And when she says, “I’ll never sp… she means, “Put your arms around m… as I stand disconsolate at the win…
The woman said yes she would go to… Unless he heard wrong and she said… Where they could learn the tango a… Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant… But no, she said Australia. She’d…
When my father Said mein Fehler I thought it meant “I’m a failure” which was my error
If you could write down the words moving through a man’s mind as he masturbates you’d have a quick bonus bonk read, I used to think. But words were never adequate
This bed thy center is, these wall… The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful ol… Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye,… That never touch with inarticulate… Those dying generations-at their s…