Elinor Nauen

I just threw away dozens of books that got drenched & moldy from a broken pipe in my basement studio. I'm trying to convince myself that I wasn't going to (re)read them anyway & I'm better off tossing even more, but it breaks my heart to see books get ruined.

What's the difference between a collector & a hoarder?

Money.

Money means you can buy better things & a place to store your treasures.

Well, I guess collectors hoard stuff people are interested in, while hoarders collect stuff that no one else would ever want.

The Poetry Project's first-ever gala was last night, honoring Anne Waldman. Performances by Laurie Anderson (who told a story while playing a tiny electric violin), LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (sound poem: singing & reciting to a track), Yoshiko Chuma (her muscular, humorous dance). Toasts from Eleni Siklianos (Anne's niece) & Ron Padgett.

What a wonderful night. Flowers, food, atmosphere—all fantastic. We raised $100,000 to sustain the Project in the lean times ahead.

I never appreciated more how tireless Anne has been on behalf of poetry. Many poets are tireless on behalf of themselves (& their pet issues, maybe), but she has done the hard organizing work, without complaint.

Rosemary Carroll & I  Read More 

Wonderful night: First a stop at my friend's 33rd-floor apartment with a wonderful view of Brooklyn. A new building, with no crazy electric boxes randomly nailed to the wall. (OK, I'll get over my ridiculous landlord's cheapo projects one of these days.)

Then we went to a fundraiser for Chris Hurst, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, who was very impressive in his passion & his speaking (a former broadcast journalist).

I even won a "Virginia is for lovers" t-shirt, although naturally I was hoping for the grand prize of a weekend at an estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Read More 

I feel like the best thing I have done in six months is subscribe to The Economist. Sober, well-written, fair-minded, and if there's an agenda, they make it clear: You know where they stand. Whatever they write about ends up fascinating me, even the abstruse financial stuff that I skip in every other publication.  Read More 

Being the car guy that I am, or was, I'm surprised that I had never heard about Sinclair Lewis's early novel Free Air, (1919) "one of the very first novels about an automobile-powered road trip across the United States," according to an article in The Public Domain Review.

As I'm sure you know, Lewis (1885–1951) is enjoying new popularity lately, thanks to his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, about an authoritarian American president. And I'm sure everyone has read, seen the movie, or knows about Main Street, Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith, and Babbitt, and that he won a Nobel & a Pulitzer. But that he was an early adopter of the automobile was new to me. He also wrote about pilots & aviation, and traveled widely. His appreciation of big city  Read More 

I always like to arrive at this date, because on April 24, 1971, my friend Beth & I hitchhiked down to D.C. for the last big anti–Vietnam War demonstration. She woke up smiling on the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the young man who happened to be sleeping next to her fell in love, & thus we fell in with The House, which has been my tribe and lodestone for 46 years now.

I've written about The House so much, today it's just a tip of the protest sign to these men & women I love & always will.  Read More 

Johnny and I have begun our summer read: Alphabet, by the Danish poet Inger Christensen (1935–2009) (trans. Susanna Nied). It's based on the Fibonacci sequence, although I can't quite see it. It's intensely lyrical & intensely fierce—not often a poet can do that simultaneously. Also, a kind of heavy yet lilting Anglo-Saxon alliteration pulls it together.  Read More 

All I can think about is snow

And titles for my book about snow

Which is a lot shorter than I expected

Now that I've shoveled away all the technical excess

And made a nice clean path

Into whatever it is I might turn out to be talking about

Aw y'know, just so perfect & eternal & beautiful.

Staggered through the last of Passover & am happily eating chametz again.

Ended the holiday at a baseball game. Yankee stadium opened on this date (April 18) in 1923. This was the "new" Yankee stadium we were at, of course. A crisp 2-hour game against the ChiSox that ended their 8-game winning streak. A chilly 50°. I thought I wouldn't bother keeping score but once they started with the lineup I quick drew a card in my little notebook. It's how I watch a game. I used to draw scorecards on scrap paper on the way to the ballpark before someone gave me a fancy wire-bound scorebook.

All baseball is the same game & not like anything else ever. That's what's so great about it. Read More 

I never wear shoes without socks NO NO NO

Except ONE pair

I own two pairs of Naot Miros, in different colors. The identical match I wouldn't wear without socks.

Eileen always seemed like the only person who could wear shoes without socks, Boston Irish that she is.

I can't say more about shoes because it may force me to think about feet.  Read More 

The 10 most influential events in my life, in no particular order, & being ones I participated in (meaning no "I was born"):

* Quit college, after which I had to live by my wits not just trudge along in a path that was laid out for me.

* Met Maggie, best friend, collaborator, critic, supporter.

* Married Johnny,  Read More 

I can't really think of away to connect this photo, randomly taken because I liked the glass, with the day—warm weather, first seder tonight, finishing bits of work, cleaning up the space around me, reading Greggo's wonderful new book of old journals, feeling unexhausted for the first time in a week......

I love my little home because of all the art. It's Johnny's for the most part, although I suppose that makes it ours. He bought a work Joe made in 1962, which has to be one of the earliest in his oeuvre, doesn't it?

God, it makes me love Johnny so much.

Although if I'd been his wife with two little kids & he spent some windfall on art, I might have not been so happy. Or maybe I would have been. I was never anybody's mother so I never had to think unselfishly into the future.  Read More 

This is what I want to see!

The poster (seen in the subway) reminds me of how much I liked Season 1 of Ice Road Truckers. But these guys drive even faster & crazier, I bet.

Nothing I like better than noise & crash.

100 years ago today, the United States entered World War I. It was also my English grandmother's 32nd birthday. Was it a date she remembered her whole life? I think about WWI a lot but not from an American pov. All of my grandparents—two English, two German—were involved, & my dad (born 1906) was a child in Berlin. Grandpa Jack was gassed & died at 50. Somehow it's the only war that I feel a connection to—long enough ago that any sadness is pleasant self-indulgence.  Read More 

Just finished Judy Blunt's ferocious memoir, Breaking Clean, about growing up on a ranch in eastern Montana. Although she was born in 1954, you might well have thought it was 50 or a hundred years earlier. There was a grim Victorian assumption that the individual was sacrificed to the family and that women couldn't inherit or run things. No wonder she fled—even though she was 3rd or 4th generation there & loved the land. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it, riding horses, cutting cattle—but when you know none of it can really ever belong to you, you too would flee, I think.  Read More 

I was looking for an old blog post, which I'd forgotten to tag, so I've been scanning previous months. And I suddenly see that June of 2016 isn't there at all in my archives. Where is it? Of course I can't remember what I wrote about so I can't search but I know I wrote throughout that month, as I have for almost 4 years now, with few skips.  Read More 

I'd forgotten how nice it is to wander around, sit outside & read, look for quirky New York sights....

Seriously, is it ever going to stop raining? I already have mushrooms sprouting in my hair & my last dry pair of pants, yep, got soaked this afternoon.

"Good for the farmers," someone was sure to intone back in the agricultural heartland where I was raised. But this much rain? Is it good for anybody?

Yesterday during the warmup before fight class, I felt or heard my left knee snap or pop. It was so quick & unexpected & alarming that I couldn't say, even a moment later, what had happened or what sense was involved.

I was afraid but a moment later, when I dared wiggle it, it felt fine.

In fact, it felt better than it has in years.

Today it's still fine & I could get into a deeper stance than I have in ages.

I wonder if I managed to break an adhesion or scar tissue. In any event, I am pretty happy not to have pain in my knee for the first time in recent memory.

This is from the late 1800s & is from West Virginia’s Hospital for the Insane also known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Open these days for tours only.

I think these might be contributing factors not causes, & I'm sure it's a complete list, so that every symptom anyone suffered from is on there.

Intemperance & business trouble
Kicked in the head by a horse
Imaginary female trouble
Immoral life
Laziness
Greediness
Jealousy & religion
Egotism
Superstition
The war
Mental excitement
Novel reading
Over action of the mind
Politics
Decoyed into the army
Fighting fire  Read More 

What if you could (legally) change your birth day? Would you?

(Not the year.)

(Or maybe the year?)

What date would you prefer to your own?

Me, I think February 18 can't be beat. Plus a different date just wouldn't be mine. I sometimes dream I'm married to someone else & living in a different home.  Read More 

Another (see February 22) photo that was lying on the steps outside my office.

I hope they are still together.

Was fortunate to attend the second Phil Patton Memorial (sadly) Lecture at the A/D/O design studio in Brooklyn, thanks to an enduring friendship with Phil's wonderful wife Kathleen. This year's speaker was Dejan Sudjic, director of London's Design Museum, who made me see past my usual careless unconcern for anything but function (except when it comes to cars & Apple products). I bought & am reading his book of essays, B is for Bauhaus, Y is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World from A to Z. (As always, I'm a sucker for an abecedary.)

 Read More 

Sleeping, that's my day.

Back Sunday.

My goodness, it's been a bad week for cultural icons.

Just last Friday this was my Facebook post:

I'm belatedly "occupying FB" with poetry. Joseph Massey gave me Joanne Kyger, who I love, but more in a big heap than in any separate poem, since every poem she writes is atypical yet somehow add up to one beautiful work. So it took a while to find when & then I picked this one because it's timely, which isn't a great reason but here it is: Read More 

Johnny and I once bought a coffeemaker entirely because it came with free filters. We had no interest in any other feature or price, just the filters.

Which turn out to cost 99¢.

I could grab a paragraph like the following 10, 20, 50 times a day from every newspaper, website, & magazine. Imagine! Every single one of these stories should be the biggest news of the month, but most will whiz by without a breath of notice.

From Texas Monthly magazine's daily newsletter:
Remember when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounded up about 50 people over the span of a few days in Austin last month, and publicly characterized the raids as simply “routine” enforcement actions? Well, turns out the raids were not “routine.” Instead, Austin was targeted as retribution for the Travis County Sheriff’s sanctuary policies. On Monday,  Read More