For 12 years, I have lived in the Catskill Mountains, which means living with bears. When we first moved here from Manhattan, my wife, my daughter, and I rented an apartment in the hamlet of Shandaken. This was in a former boarding house used to train prizefighters, in an isolated
I forwarded a check from my parents to my daughter, Sylvia, who is a senior at Bard College. (A gift at Hanukkah is known as “gelt.”) Along with the money, I sent the following letter. Sylvia: Enclosed is a check from my parents, consisting of “Hanukkah gelt.” (Suddenly it occurs
Tony Kushner appeared at Temple Emanuel in Kingston, N.Y., two Sundays ago. He didn’t give a speech; he was interviewed by another playwright, Rinne Groff. Kushner has the prosperous, worried, intelligent air of an MD—except that he also looks famous. When you observe his elongated face and
I don’t have a TV set, but I visit my parents from time to time, and their television provides me with modernistic experiences. The other day my favorite Mamas and the Papas song rang forth, on a commercial—“Go Where You Wanna Go”: You’ve got to go where
I went to California for a week, and when I returned, winter was here. Not deep winter, but introductory winter: the vestibule of winter. The leaves were off the trees, except for the small willow behind my house, whose leaves clung on like bedraggled confetti—the same confetti I saw
A sage said, “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.” Who was it? I just looked it up, on BrainyQuote: Robert Graves. But Graves was wrong. There is a little money in poetry—at least for me. For example, on Aug. 6 (Hiroshima
It’s difficult to convey the tedium of rural life. I live in a hamlet called Phoenicia, in the midst of the Catskill Mountains. One of my daily habits is walking up and down my road, which happens to be named High Street. A car will pass; I’ll wave.
I woke from a dream that I was eating my finger. Some guy had explained to me that I must eat my left middle finger—perhaps to prevent gangrene? So I bit into it, tore off a piece and swallowed it. Then a little more. Then some more. I was
