I took the #WidemanChallenge, in which a few literary critics, bloggers and journalists spent the end of 2020 calling attention to a writer that too few people know about: John Edgar Wideman, an important voice from the Rust Belt whose works are keenly relevant in the year of George Floyd. Here’s what happened when I read two of his books.
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I’m reading Diane di Prima’s “Revolutionary Letters” this morning. The great Beat poet died this weekend.
There’s a smell of scorched earth in the air lately, here in America. It’s smoke from Pacific coast wildfires, and it’s something more: the warning scent of an authoritarian future we must avoid, even as our society chokes on climate change, racism, social injustice, predatory capitalism and military escalation. Scorched earth is what I see when I close my eyes and think about the direction the USA is going in right now.
The poet Michael McClure, who died on May 4, 2020 in his home in Oakland, California, was one of five readers at the seminal Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco in 1955 that kicked off the Beat Generation …
Yesterday was Leap Day, February 29, 2020. I spent the day in a mad frenzy, because about 24 hours earlier I suddenly realized time was running out for me to write, record, edit, assemble, publish and metatag the February episode of “Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera”, the podcast I launched a year ago. I got the February episode out in February, because Leap Day saved my ass.
Creating podcasts is still a learning experience for me, and this is the fastest episode I ever created …
I took a walk through Prospect Park today. These hilly acres in the middle of Brooklyn were designed to get you lost, with swerving paths that make you think you’re walking in a definite direction as they subtly turn you back again until you pass the spot where you started and realize you’ve turned completely around. If you ever tried to walk Prospect Park without a map you know what I’m talking about. If you ever tried to walk Prospect Park with a map you probably know what I’m talking about too, because that map really isn’t going to help. It’s kinda like life, and there are plenty of ways to get lost outside of Brooklyn too, whether you carry a map or not.
I went to the climate march in New York City last week …
I’ve been thinking about voice — about my own voice, and about the word ‘voice’. I looked up quotes with the word ‘voice’ and immediately
The literary roots of opera go back to the theater of Dionysus in Ancient Athens.
