A new episode of “Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera” just dropped! It’s about Die Zauberflote by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder, and this one was a long time coming. I’ve rarely struggled so hard to produce a single podcast episode, or a single blog post.
It was a struggle … Read the rest
I spent the final days of 2023 desperately scrambling to complete two episodes for the two podcasts that represent the clashing sides of my brain.
I was possessed by a superstitious idea that I needed to launch both episodes before 2024 began – a superstition I probably manufactured as a … Read the rest
Jack Kerouac was born 100 years ago today, on March 12, 1922. I wrote a poem about this.
… Read the restThe poets are coming out of the woodwork lately
Called by a voice, and our careworn restless souls
Jack Kerouac! We called you famous for a book
Beneath the Parthenon, on the southern side of the most famous hill in Athens, Greece, there stands today the Theater of Dionysus. Two millennia ago a Dionysian festival gathered here each year at harvest time for a series of remarkable dramatic performances. The great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides … Read the rest
A few days ago a friend told me she was worried about my rage. “You seem upset a lot,” she said.
Another friend told me the same thing after seeing my photos of a protest march. This friend says I need to “relax” about Donald Trump, Mike Pence, stolen seats … Read the rest
It was only six years ago — but it seems so much longer than that — that I wrote a book called Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (and Why It Matters). This book emerged from a series of blog posts I was composing (under my then-pseudonym Levi Asher) called … Read the rest
Because I love literature, I bristle when I hear Russia described as my country’s enemy.
Certainly Vladimir Putin is our enemy, because he is a tyrant who murders journalists. And certainly Donald Trump is our enemy, not only because he’s a racist and a sexual predator and a con-man, but … Read the rest
Robert Maynard Pirsig, author of the great 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died on April 24, 2017 at the age of 88. This novel was a cornerstone of the late Beat/Hippie literary era, and it continues to touch the hearts of countless readers all over … Read the rest
A few weeks ago I showed up for a cool poetry reading at a dive called Gunther’s in Northport, Long Island, a bar famous for being Jack Kerouac’s favorite drinking spot when he’d lived nearby. This reading was significant to me because something was happening for the first time. When … Read the rest