Jack Gilbert
Once, after a period of extended meditation, I went out to the front porch with Jack Gilbert’s collection The Great Fires – maybe a year or two after I’d first …
The President Doesn’t Need Intelligence
What’s so great about intelligence and listening to people? His IQ is the biggest, what would he need with that? And daily! He’s a smart guy. Why would such a …
Stay, Illusion
I first read Lucie Brock-Broido in Poetry magazine a few years back. It was the issue that published the poem “Extreme Wisteria” (first link below) from this collection, Stay, Illusion. From the first …
Not That Anyone In This House Knows Of
There’s a ring of keys in a drawer in the kitchen of our house that open nothing – at least not that anyone in this house knows of. My kids …
The Fiction Writer Steps Onto the Elevator
The elevator door closed on the three of them: the fiction writer, the mother, and the preteen boy. The fiction writer was going to see her tax attorney on the …
The President’s Assistant Ties His Tie Too Long
He’s seen the comments in those liberal men’s magazines, he knows. Dems magazines, they should call them. The same ones who three years ago said it was somewhat slimming to …
The Last Payphone In America
This cafeteria, one of America’s loneliest inventions. Scavenger types everywhere, bald heads, pointed chins, they pay for their seat, but sometimes with no more than a cup of black coffee. …
The Teacher
I said, You have answers. I was trying to explain why I had stayed behind when everyone had gone. I said, I’m looking for answers. Yes, perhaps. Perhaps… I have …
An Endless Alliance of Man: Why We Should Read Frederic Prokosch
This is an image from a collage I made (entitled “How Not To Die”) and shows a quote from Frederic Prokosch’s Storm and Echo (1948) and like many moments …
What’s Wrong With The Baby?
My wife thinks our new house is haunted. The baby, six months old, screams all night in his nursery. Nothing soothes him. She wants to move, she just won’t say …