May 23Paris Doesn’t Belong to UsOriginally published in See What I See — Zerogram, 2021 INVESTIGATIONS DON’T USUALLY begin on a honeymoon. Honeymoon — that compound, bloviated word from the sixteenth century, is more apt to be punctuated by pre-Happy Hour debauchery, raucous sex or imaginings of sex, the ribald, the body-centric, or the consumer-centric…Paris45 min readParis45 min read
Apr 19On the First Anniversary(written three years ago) “This is no way to live, right?” My father said this to me in the hospital room where a year ago he lay dying. His blood had gone haywire, pooling all over his body, so half of his skin’s surface was colored deep purple. Does anything…6 min read6 min read
Mar 20Holy Hill (from See What I See, Zerogram Edition)“Poetry is a strange angel. And has very little to do with enjoyment, actually. Great deal to do with joy, not with enjoyment. Enjoyment is patronizing and possessive, like the old archaic euphemism of a man sexually enjoying a woman’s body. So when you enjoy a poem, you say, You…Poetry16 min readPoetry16 min read
Dec 5, 2022Best Reading Experiences of 2022Emerson says, Never read a book that is not a year old. It feels silly to only list books from a certain year — “as Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary.” (Gass, Reading Rilke) Ingeborg Bachmann — Malina: Jagged and fanged and utterly unlike…Books7 min readBooks7 min read
Nov 28, 2021The Best Newer Books I’ve Read — 2021Emerson says, Never read a book that is not a year old, so there are books here from previous years. Most of them were published by small presses. Also, it feels silly to only list books from a certain year — “as Borges has taught us, all the books in…6 min read6 min read
Nov 23, 2021For Feeling Bookish Podcast: Why I created the literary journal Socrates on the Beach — Small Press vs. Large PressNOTE: This was meant to be heard aloud and not read — it is here because of technical issues. The bend in the river in the present day state of the written word, between the large presses and the small presses has never been so pronounced as now. Of course…5 min read5 min read
Mar 3, 2021Excerpt from See What I See: “Does Eric Rohmer Have the All of Me?”I asked myself, Why does this tall but dead Frenchman fascinate me so? Maybe it’s the women in his films, maybe the men. Maybe it’s the women’s names put forth in the English titles of his first series of films, the Moral Tales — My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee…Eric Rohmer3 min readEric Rohmer3 min read
Jan 17, 2021Living in the First Paragraph of Henry James’s “The Story In It”Is it possible to live inside a paragraph? Even a first paragraph by itself, duly discarding the rest of the story? Henry James’s “The Story In It” is quite a quick tale for The Master — only seventeen Library of America pages, whereas his stories are twenty-eight or thirty on…7 min read7 min read
Dec 26, 2020The best newer books I’ve readEmerson says, Never read a book that is not a year old, so there are books here from previous years, but all of them were published by small presses. Points of Attack — Mark de Silva: Review — “[T]he desire to feel a certain way about oneself or the world…Books2 min readBooks2 min read
Published inHuman Parts·May 20, 2015Why Does Internet Dating Often Fail?Diego Bonilla Internet dating is easy. Since life is usually hard, this should give one pause. One can set up as many dates as one desires. One needn’t speak words to a live person who may reject her. Anyone with a computer can do it — even a robot, who…Dating6 min readDating6 min read
