Since I was a child I’ve enjoyed end-of-the-world fiction based, however irresponsibly, on Biblical prophecy. There’s always been a good deal of this sort of thing around, but of late there’s been a splashy and satisfying surfeit of the stuff, and lots of other folks have been climbing on board the Glory Train. I guess … Read more
You were talking about disinclination. Let’s explore that idea further, if we may. No, sorry, I thought I made it plenty fucking clear that I’m feeling disinclined. Well, perhaps then you might tell me a bit more about your travels in Saudi Arabia. I’m afraid you’ve once again mistaken me for another patient. I’ve never … Read more
I’ve written previously about my love of indexes (or indices, if you’re so inclined), and my huge admiration for the people who make a living compiling these things. Many of these folks clearly have a perverse sense of humor and the souls of poets. Some of them are perhaps batshit crazy. Check out the decidedly … Read more
I was put in this world to march, but one leg’s longer than the other, my boots are too tight, and I walk with a limp that gets more pronounced by the day. Still, those were my early orders: March. And I am a man who follows orders, if not instructions. Instructions, it seems to … Read more
Sometimes I feel like the days are a floor I’m crawling across, blind, with a dead flower in my mouth, trying to find my way to the other side, which is here, and a few body lengths into the darkness beyond here. It’s a slow business, often bruising. Where did the flower come from? And … Read more
This is always such a bittersweet night for me, as I curl up in my recliner before the fireplace with the last volume of poetry of the season and a glass of eggnog. Tomorrow, alas, all the verse will be packed away, the poetry decorations taken down, and the Caedmon Recordings of Poets will be … Read more
–The day of Samuel Beckett’s Funeral. December 26, 1989. Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. The Spam hat was my own humble offering. This is just the book to give your sister if she’s a loud, dirty, boozy girl. –Dylan Thomas’s blurb on the front dustwrapper of the 1966 first American edition of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds (Walker … Read more
I’ve gone by a lot of different names over the years, every one of them, I’m sure, transparently phoney. I now recognize that I was laboring under some fairly serious delusions, and harbored the misguided notion that these names I’d choose –and choose carefully, I might add– demonstrated a certain flair. What they actually were, … Read more
My instincts at the moment are pretty minimal. Maybe instincts isn’t the word I’m looking for. I’m not sure what word I’m looking for, to be perfectly honest with you. Appetite? My appetite at the moment is pretty minimal? While that’s certainly true, it’s hardly what I meant to say in the first place. It’s … Read more
—James Dankert I need some new links. I love most of the folks over there in the column to the left, but they’re all pretty much holdovers from my old site, and I’ve noticed lately that some of them are no longer active –a lot of them, actually, which I’m sure is a reflection of … Read more