Chasing the Bubble

A poster hanging in a coffee shop window on Smith Street promotes yet another Walt Whitman event. My friend Michael, a Whitman scholar, told me there is some kind of Whitman commemoration going on in Brooklyn every month. *** In terms of square miles, Brooklyn is New York’s second-largest borough, after Queens; in terms of […]

Vacation as Metaphor

View of the beach in San Francisco, America’s favorite vacation city For anyone who loves a journey and has an appetite for adventure, travel is as essential for pleasure as a working shower, delicious food and a good pair of walking shoes. An article in the Boston Globe by Drake Bennett applies a little more […]

Weirdly Clear

Nox, by Anne Carson (Photo: Tony Cenicola) I’ve followed Anne Carson’s work for many years. She’s a complex persona—part professor of classics, poet, novelist, essayist, critic and all around category buster—exploring a wide range of topics, approaches and methodologies. Meghan O’Rourke’s description is apt: “Anne Carson has somehow become a culture hero—the ‘anti-bourgeois’ variety of […]

Underneath the West

Dinosaur tracks along the Purgatoire River, one of many photographs in Mark Ruwedel’s exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts Reasons to stop in at the Peabody Essex Museum are many, but here’s my favorite from my latest trip: “Imprints—Photographs by Mark Ruwedel.” At first glance I assumed these 41 images were an […]

Sailing Out Munchingly

Rayme 1, mixed media on canvas (to be included in my upcoming show at the Brooklyn Workshop Gallery) Quick Black Hole Spin Change I don’t like it— two massive Black Holes each twirling at the core of two merging galaxies get close enough to fuse together then quick as a wink just as they are […]