Pearl London was a beloved teacher and writer at the New School. In 1970, she started to invite guests to her seminar that over 25 years became called “Works in Progress.” Guests included Maxine Kumin, Robert Hass, June Jordan, Galway Kinnell, Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Simic, Ann Carson, Paul Muldoon, Robert
Texas is the punch line to a lot of gallows humor about the American criminal justice system, and my recent note on attorney David Dow’s book, The Autobiography of an Execution, points out the reality. Here’s some data to add to the grim picture: * Rank of Texas’s
For lack of a better metaphor, suffice it to say that visits from my UPS driver and his delivery brethren make almost every day like Christmas at my address. But the recent arrival of Fantagraphics’s Gahan Wilson’sFifty Years of Playboy Cartoons (three volumes, slip-cased, 942 pages), containing
Even avid students of American governance and civic-minded people may fall a little short in their understanding of the least accessible branch of the United States national government—I am referring to the Supreme Court, occasionally referred to by various commentators as the Supremes. That understanding is not advanced
Not to worry, I am not going to go crazy on this poetry thing (I don’t think). But I couldn’t get past Russian-born Vera Pavlova’s slender volume, If There Is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems (Knopf; reportedly her first full-length volume in English), translated
The fact that April is designated National Poetry Month (by what governing body escapes me, though I would not be surprised to learn that the pack of scoundrels in our Congress had lent their sketchy imprimatur to it) might have some meaning if it were not competing with National Stress
Though I am not an (religiously) observant Jew, I am appreciative and simpatico with various myths and legends and teachings of my people. And I am especially thankful that the Israelites have avoided the voodoo of creating saints—which is, I suppose, an entertaining and consoling enterprise for folk who
Such are the caprices of the book world that the intersection of art and commerce occasionally produces interesting distractions and ambiences (sic). Given the Darwinian forces (natural selection?) at play in the publication of books (more so with literary fiction), there are frequent efforts to advance a back story in
If it were not for the New YorkTimes’s critic’s resounding advocacy of Ron Rash’s writing, I would most certainly be quibbling with the opening statement: “Ron Rash was the seasoned author of nine books of fiction and poetry before his 10th, the stunning 2008 Serena, [apparently the
There is an odd reversal of polarities when the notion of resting and setting aside a period of time for a kind of imposed tranquility is considered utopian. But of course the achievement of states-of-affairs, when the modifier “24/7” is viewed as a positive attribute implying at
