Category: Being A Writer

Mockingjays on Morningside

A park bench and a vista in Morningside Park, New York City

I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration’s support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn. Paul Auster was widely celebrated as a Brooklyn writer from … Read the rest

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Waters Run Deep (A River Change)

jigsaw puzzle of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon

I really don’t know what happened to me about five years ago, when I suddenly found it difficult and annoying to write blog posts.

I suppose this wasn’t so strange, because it is difficult to write good blog posts, and difficult things can be annoying. What was strange is that I’d … Read the rest

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Kerouac 100

Artwork of Jack Kerouac by Becca Stein @BecVersa
Artwork by Becca Stein @bec.versa

Jack Kerouac was born 100 years ago today, on March 12, 1922. I wrote a poem about this.

The 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

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A Compendium of Raindrops

A found mirror on Ocean Ave in Flatbush, Brooklyn

It was a rough day for me back in February of this year when the great Beat publisher, bookseller, pacifist and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti died at the age of 101, and I couldn’t post about it on Litkicks. I was right in the middle of migrating this entire website to … Read the rest

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A Journey Of Voice

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 … Read the rest

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Looking For My Voice

Marc Eliot Stein with some Brooklyn graffiti

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 found a bunch that got me thinking. So many worthwhile quotes, in fact, that I stopped reading after I got to these four:

The one

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Satori in Brooklyn: Our Shared Spaces

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

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Reflections

I’m in a reflective mood lately. Looking within, through a glass darkly and all that. That’s my excuse for the fact that it’s March 2018 and this is my first post of the year.

I also have another excuse: I’ve been working on a really good Litkicks article about opera. … Read the rest

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