What Matters at Point Reyes
The other day, I picked up Robert Bly’s Point Reyes Poems, a chapbook first published in the mid-70s. Bly is…
Poetry, Fiction & the Arts
Eight Hundred Pages into Knausgaard
I’ve asked friends about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s 3,500-page novelesque autobiography My Struggle. Most have never heard of it. Most of…
The Hand that Wants to Become God
This past week, an anonymous neighbor left two shopping bags full of books at the Little Library we built at…
While Ashbery Dies, I Read Sandburg
The week John Ashberry dies, I read Carl Sandburg’s Wind Song. Ashbery is, for the time being, celebrated. Sandburg, once…
Swimming Between Two Cities
Tomas Tranströmer’s poem, “Two Cities” sticks with me: On each side of the strait, two cities one blacked out, occupied…
Wendell Berry, Roots to the Earth
I just read Roots to the Earth, a collection of Wendell Berry’s poetry and prose on American rural life. It…
Book Monster meets Mary Szybist
Book Monster is a Korean retailer specializing in used and remaindered books. The first U.S. outlet, just off the Third…
Anaïs Nin & Husband
On her Facebook feed, R.Y. just posted a link to a new collection of correspondence between Henry Miller and Anaïs…
Poems for Just a Few Children
I read two short books this morning. One is very short: Frank J. Anderson’s Birds on My Mind. Anderson, the…
Harryette Mullen’s Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
Harryette Mullen, a poet and UCLA English professor, does a lot of walking from her home in what I’m guessing…
Left Write & Centaur 