Cherrying the Mind

Anne Carson’s poem overlooks Boston Harbor alongside the ICA First Chaldic Oracle There is something you should know. And the right way to know it is by a cherrying of your mind. Because if you press your mind towards it and try to know that thing as you know a thing, you will not know […]

Poetry’s Leaky Margins

Anne Carson and Rashaun Mitchell: Ms. Carson, a poet, and Mr. Mitchell, a dancer and choreographer, collaborated on “Nox” and “Bracko” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. From left, Marcie Munnerlyn, Mr. Mitchell, Carol Dougherty,Ms. Carson, Robert Currie and Kate Gilhuly in “Bracko.” (Photo: Liza Voll) My admiration for the poet Anne Carson […]

Merwin: Past and Present

The Times’ put it this way: “The famously handsome Mr. Merwin in his younger years.” Wow. Few poets get that accolade… (Photo: Dido Merwin) A moment to contemplate W. S. Merwin, a poet whose work I respect but I often take for granted. As Dwight Garner wrote in a recent article in the New York […]

Weirdly Clear

Nox, by Anne Carson (Photo: Tony Cenicola) I’ve followed Anne Carson’s work for many years. She’s a complex persona—part professor of classics, poet, novelist, essayist, critic and all around category buster—exploring a wide range of topics, approaches and methodologies. Meghan O’Rourke’s description is apt: “Anne Carson has somehow become a culture hero—the ‘anti-bourgeois’ variety of […]

Sailing Out Munchingly

Rayme 1, mixed media on canvas (to be included in my upcoming show at the Brooklyn Workshop Gallery) Quick Black Hole Spin Change I don’t like it— two massive Black Holes each twirling at the core of two merging galaxies get close enough to fuse together then quick as a wink just as they are […]