Leaf Fall

The leaves have been turning color and falling for a couple of weeks now, but today was the first day they fell in great numbers, all at once, in big, wind-driven swirls. We’ve had waves of wind and rain all afternoon and the trees, though some still have green leaves, are noticably more naked. (Is [...]

More Signs of Fall

The Canada Geese are making a hell of a noise down on the river, getting ready to form up and head south.
At the local farm stand there are no more summer squash, but the selection of winter squash is generous.
Days are warm, but nights are cold enough to fire up the woodstove.
I’m working on poems [...]

National Banned Book Week

The last week in September in the US is designated National Banned Book Week by the National Library Association. It ought to be every writer’s ambition to write a book considered subversive enough to be banned. This week the Word A Day folks are devoting their space to words having to do with censorship.
More on banned [...]

Autumn

Our bedroom window looks out over the river, though this time of year the leaves of the maple trees mostly screen our view of the water. This morning I woke around six-thirty and looked out at the trees bathed in soft morning light. The leaves are turning orange now, though there is still quite a [...]

Noted

1. Ed Mycue has a new chapbook I’m looking forward to reading, I Am a Fact, Not a Fiction.
2. I have just received my copy of Visiting Wallace, an anthology of poems inspired by the life and work of Wallace Stevens, and in which I have a poem. I am particularly gratified by this inclusion [...]

Anniversary

On this anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I simply note the destructive violent power of absolute belief. Certainty is so difficult to maintain that whole religions and political systems have to be created to prop it up. Those systems — theirs, ours — are inherently violent.

Mindfulness & the Chaos of Voices

Even a little experience trying to cultivate what the Buddhists (and others) call “mindfulness” demonstrates one thing for certain: the mind is a chaos of voices. At least mine is. If the goal is to observe and ultimately come into some kind of harmony with the chaos of voices, that is a robustly active attitude [...]

Health Care

I always like these occasional features in the NY Times Sunday Magazine about a mysterious medical diagnosis. This account, though, seemed particularly relevant at a time when the country is debating health care reform. [Spoiler alert] The patient, a sixty-four year old woman who is pretty clearly from the working class, loses her ability to [...]

Memory

Had a dream last night that I lost my car in a huge shopping mall parking lot. It was specifically my new Honda and I was trying to use the fancy electronic key to make the lights flash (it was daytime) or to pop the trunk open so I could see it, but I couldn’t [...]

Ekleksographia

Ekleksographia is a very cool new online poetry publication. And I’m not just saying that because my friend Anny Ballardini has selected some work of mine to appear in the forthcoming issue. The inimitable Jesse Glass of Ahadada Books is the spirit behind the effort and as with all his projects, Ek (as I am [...]

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