Tag Archives: reading

There must be a type of experience that isn’t uncommon among folk, yet is felt individually as epochal and singular. I classify it as contemplation of a certain prospect from a particular height in circumstances which combine to induce a … Continue reading →

Frank Stella has died. He’s the one who said, “What you see is what you see,” with reference to painting (his painting, at least), a slogan someone described as “pithy and enduring.” I liked it so much I had it … Continue reading →

The most terrifying exercise I know is to calculate how many seconds I can expect to live. I refuse. Never send to know for whom the clock ticks. It ticks for thee (not me). I heard my dad in his … Continue reading →

Call it the agony of the long-distance reader. There’s a lot of verse out there. It’s hard to give any one text a non-cursory read. On occasion there’s a specimen I’d like to flounder around in, nudge and knock about, … Continue reading →

It’s possible to attribute eccentric form to lineated discourse that’s unscannable. Discard capitalization, italics and punctuation. What’s left is line. Lines have their element, like a fish its water, in white space aka page space. The writer commandeers spacing as … Continue reading →

‘Romer’s Gap’ by Tian-Ai is published in Poetry, January/February 2024. Romer’s gap, supratidal, intertidal, subtidal, fly agaric, snailfish, and aphotic are terms I boned up on in scaling the text. Italic print sets off three sections, headed by the tidal … Continue reading →

“When Davis’s poems are poetry, they are powerful.” (Langston Hughes, on Frank Marshall Davis) I’ve no basis for discerning what’s verse and what’s poetry other than whether it jostles a personal needle. I compare a poetry moment (loosely) to another … Continue reading →