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Thomas Devaney interviews the late Bill Berkson for the “Brooklyn Rail”
Devaney/Rail: Earlier today you said “something something, baby” and were kind of charting a geography of a tone: connecting a sound in Virgil Thomson’s voice, which you said Frank O’Hara was picking up on. Did…
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Matthew Zapruder on Ashbery’s “The One Thing That Can Save America”
<<< On the cover of this pocket-sized edition of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the poet stands in a doorway. He wears the somehow simultaneously ill-advised and completely stylish ensemble of a half-unbuttoned…
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The Beautiful One Has Arrived (by Mitch Sisskind)
The seeming impossibility of the Great PyramidEngendered in him such contempt for peopleThat he chose isolation lest he start screamingHow petty and foolish were their vaingloriousAccomplishments compared to even a single Miraculous fact about the…
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“Sestina for Harry [Mathews]” [by Joseph McElroy, with his note on the poem]
SESTINA for HARRY And for Marie Not sure you’re here or where in solitarySplendor. Truth, our life and letters not a wreck Waiting to happen quite yet, your absence less rawThan real — dark,…
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On the deaths of poets [by Susan Lewis]
The recent passing of John Ashbery provided the impetus for this week's final post. Ashbery's death, and those of others I deeply admire, including James Tate and Russell Edson, turned out to disturb me,…
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11-2-2017 (by Mitch Sisskind)
One class of problems – Math people will attest to this – can be clearlyArticulated whereupon It only remains for an Answer to be found Or never to be foundBut finding the answerIs of small significanceAnd even of sad…
