Yo Ivanhoe

Moving books around on the shelves, a quilt of my own making taking shape and standing solid against the wall. All those stories that have both saved and ruined me. This image is somewhere on those shelves: the testicles of Uranus, bobbing in a moon-shattered sea, headed for Cyprus. What a foul and wonderful story. … Read more

I used to think that if I could just get my hands on a sweet potato all my luck would change. If I could just get me some bacon, some butter and eggs, or one of them lollypops. Life’s not so simple, I guess. Boy, did I ever find that out. I was nobody’s rooster, … Read more

The kind of thing that always happens to me is I’ll go to the store to buy a book on what happened when and I’ll get lost and confused once I get there, forget what I drove out there for, and end up with a book on how to cook things in fifteen minutes, which … Read more

The day the world ended, God sat quietly alone in a huge room, alternately dozing off and turning the pages of a fat scrapbook. God could remember everything, and this no doubt saddened Him. Far below Him there were, here and there, people floating in boats and still –many of them, anyway– praying. There were … Read more

Never quite the bottom, and still rising. That old mystery: buoyancy. The body’s ability to float, the mind similarly gifted. Emerging in a green world, seemingly intent on growing ever greener. The clear, bright splendor of other blooming and glistening things. The furtive kingdom, underworld, underfoot, moving in the shadows at midnight, creeping in the … Read more

He had gone up in his rocket again and again and returned to earth each time with a renewed sense of wonder. Even so, with each return it was harder to come back down. Or, rather, it was harder to be down. He’d gradually grown accustomed to the feeling of being out of this world, … Read more

For years I lived in a rooming house where I shared a bathroom with a giant and a mermaid. The mermaid spent a lot of time in the bathtub. The giant had dodgy hygiene, generally poor social skills, and a full head of bright red hair. There was often discussion around the place as to … Read more

He needed to get rid of some of this shit –the books and magazines, the photographs of his war and the places he’d been and the things he’d seen. He needed to get out from under that story; it kept things too fresh for him, even as what he had actually experienced became more unreal … Read more

Stanley Kunitz, 1905-2006 Kunitz did not go mad, die young or yield to other forms of dissipation, despite tragedies in his early life. For years he made his living editing reference books and teaching at universities. At night he holed up in a spartan writing room where he read, wrote and rewrote until dawn. “Stanley … Read more