Memoirous

NPR Morning Edition has been doing a series on anthems.Songs they consider American anthems, and today they took a look at Springsteen’s“Born in the USA” —which by all accounts is a protest song. Yeah, says Chris Christie former Republican governor of New Jersey: it's a defiant song about , 'I was born in the U.S.A. and I deserve better than what I'm getting.' I think plenty of people didn't get what it was about, including the president of the United States."   That would be Ronald Reagan. And later conservative George Will would praise the song. But it was a song begging for hope, pleading for justice. “I'm ten years burning down the road Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A. …. End up like a dog that's been beat too much Till you spend half your life just covering up” Not too celebratory. The song went through many iterations. Upbeat, dark, a prayer. Springsteen k...

Our home school co-op was looking for space to rent. There had been several reiterations and reinventions of real estate that I’m not sure where this location fell in the chronology of her education. It was pre-9/11. The space had formerly been a girls Catholic high school with an attached convent—so it occupies a huge footprint in the Lakeview neighborhood. And, because it was designed by a FL Wright apprentice it received Landmark status. Thus, it couldn’t be torn down—though today it would have been turned into condos. There wasn’t much the Catholic hierarchy could do with the building—it was designed to be a school. So parts of it were rented out—to our home school collective and to a burgeoning French school, and to the Muslims. Of the three—only the American Islamic College continues to inhabit the space. They might actually own it. This reminds me of the Temple of Minerva in Assisi which now is the church home of Santa Maria. Archeology is full of stories of one ...

On Nov. 20, 1970 Schuyler scribbles something about Erikson: Life of Gandhi. Possibly Erik Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth on the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969). A psychoanalytical perspective. Earlier that year during the summer while on GSHI Schuyler had penned a diary/letter to Joe Brainard, commenting upon a drawing Joe had sent based upon a photo captioned “Gandhi’s worldly possessions at the time of death” showing two pairs of sandals, glasses, a book, a spittoon, a nailfile, a watch, a bowl, a spoon. In a footnote Kernan (editor of James Schuyler Diary) writes that a various points in his life Brainard was known to suddenly give away all his possessions.                    Marie Kondo would be proud, I guess. From his Diary, I can read that Schuyler loved shopping. He was a fairly flagrant consumer, perhaps an outgrowth of his psychosis. It covered over pressing financial i...

In May 1970 James Schuyler mentions Izaak Walton, Complete Angler , Walton Lives—biographies on Donne, George Herbert ,etc and Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals , 2 vols. in his Diary. Later on August 17, 1970 on Great Spruce Head Island, Schuyler quotes from the Memoir of Thomas Bewick. Thomas Bewick (1753 – 1828) English engraver, credited with reviving the technique of wood engraving. His Memoir contains absorbing descriptions of his Northumberland childhood—from Cambridge Guide to Literature in English 8/12/70 (a poem, which appeared in The Crystal Lithium ) In early August among the spruce Fall parti-colored leaves From random birch that hide Their crowns up toward the light— Deciduously needle-nested— Among the tumbled rocks—a man-made scree below a house— a dull green sumach blade slashed with red clearer than blood a skyline blue red a first fingertap, a gathering, a climax

On August 22, 1969 James Schuyler was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson , London: Oxford University Press, 1922. 1969 was a particularly stable and fruitful year for Schuyler. As a writer he was making inroads with two publications. Free Espousing Schuler’s first commercially published book of poems came out with Doubleday under the imprint Paris Review Editions.   A Nest of Ninnies the back-and-forth book co-produced by Jimmy and John Asbery. Each wrote alternating chapters, passing the manuscript back and forth over oceans, despite Fullbrights and hospital stays, the loss of friends and friendships for 17 years. I don’t think either thought it would see the light of day. The story if like a long evening of storytelling between friends, friends with wit and intelligence who both know dialogue. A tale derived from anecdotal observations of middle-class suburbia. Published by Dutton it was reviewed by W. H. Auden in the NY Times Book Review—destined to become a minor class...

a little flash piece of 500 words--that I'd been kicking around for awhile Kickstarter: Jenna woke up and smelled the bacon and eggs her roommate was ruining on the stove top and retched. Wow, that was a surprise! She wadded up her waitress outfit abandoned the night before on the floor next to her bed and, not knowing what else to do, put the puke-coated uniform into the collapsible laundry hamper she’d bought at Ikea two months ago. She’d deal with it later. to read more click on the link or go here: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=18625

“Diary of a Fruit Farmer.” This article almost sounds like a joke, certainly a niche interest. But that was James Schuyler, where his head was at. Aug. 7= He was reading James Woodeforde’s Diary, begun 1758 and continued until death, contains the minutia of daily life, with particular attention to food and drink, on Aug. 22 he mentions the above article from The Countryman , Summer 1938. While vacationing on Great Spruce Head Island the crew would take the boat over to Deer Isle and over to the Maine main land to Camden for groceries and for yard sales. I can imagine Schuyler picking up a box of decades old gardening magazine for ten cents. See “Used Handkerchiefs 5¢” The three poems (written June   30, 1969), “After Joe was at the island,” “‘Used Handkerchiefs 5¢,’” and “The Trash Book,” are either implicitly or explicitly addressed to Schuyler’s friend Joe Brainard, an important artist and collagist. Christopher Schmidt in his thesis “Baby, I am the garbage”: James Sc...

My orchid recently blossomed. This is a rare occurrence (perhaps because there is little direct light since my window ledge faces the inside of a U-shaped courtyard. At 12 noon is the best chance for sunlight. When that’s available. The month of March was dreary, being mostly cloudy. James Schuyler and I have that in common. We both live in small rooms in former hotels in a big city. So, yeah, a bloomin’ orchid is reason to celebrate. This is my #2 installment in a flash series about the memoirs James Schuyler listed in his Diary (edited by Nathan Kernan). In July of 2017 I was on Great Spruce Head Island reading Diary entries from Schuyler—written on GSHI. On August 4, 1969 he was deep in the potting soil reading various gardening memoirs. Letters from an American Farmer , J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a collection of essays describing rural life in America, first published in London 1782. Alpine Flower Garde n, Wm. Robinson. Poet and Landscape , Andrew Young, ...

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters , edited by Francis Darwin, New York: Dover Publications, 1958. (First published in 1892.) Schuyler had a New Year’s Day tradition of going to the Hazan’s (Jane Freilicher)—in fact one of his last Diary entries talks about getting dressed to go over to their soiree. On January 1, 1968 he wrote about starting Darwin’s autobiography. This notation eventually turned into the poem, “Empathy and New Year”. Here is a snippet: Got coffee and started reading Darwin: so modest, so innocent, so pleased at the surprise that he should grow up to be him. How grand to begin a new year with a new writer you really love. It is the intimate simplicity that I love about Schuyler’s poems. I am given a glimpse into the interior of someone living generations past and dwelling in a landscape foreign to me. It is the mundane details that give me a landing place, a space to inhabit. I feel solidly anchored in New York City la...

Why do I do this? I often ask myself this. *Not for money. *Not for fame or glory. *Not for world peace. Marie Kondo and her method of sorting out old things or adding new things to your life is very popular right now. Does it bring you joy? I’ve started to apply this philosophy to a lot of things—not just physical stuff in my closet, but the stuff rattling around my brain. How do I feel about my writing? It doesn’t make me rich. In fact, I mostly do not get paid. Yeah, my books receive royalties—but a big return can pretty much neutralize any expected check. At Other Writing  here at my blog you can see a full list of publishing credits. The majority of those have promised NO payment. If I do get paid it is usually less than a couple hundred a year. The worst publications treat my work as “content”—meaning it simply takes up cyber space at their on-line journal or zine. Ditto on fame and world peace. No one cares. So why do I do this thing called writin...

Florida Lauren Groff Riverhead Books, New York 2018 I am a capricious reader—of Lauren Groff. Her Fates & Furies infuriated me. I read it because it was mentioned in a group review of House Frau by Jill Alexander Essbaum, a good friend of mine. There was at the time a certain “wokeness” of reviewers about women and sex. I know, ridiculous. The idea was that these books should be grouped together because women in them were having sex. Which didn’t make sense because had not one of the reviewers read Madame Bovary ? Maybe they were put together because it was women writing novels about sex. Either way, even the categorization was infuriating. Fates & Furies went on to be highly lauded: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A FINALIST FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NPR MORNING EDITION BOOK CLUB PICK NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE Yo...

What do we do when we get too old? What is too old? The Boomers are taking over, sucking the pension right out of the Millennials. We are taking most of the resources and leaving behind deficit, decay, and a planet in distress. So for the good news— I like to write and listen to music and so I love All Songs 24/7 from NPR because it introduces me to MANY styles and new stuff. It helps me feel relevant. As if I can have an opinion on Brandi Carlisle and Cardi B. This is important in the journey to getting old, being able to have opinions and act like I know what’s going on. It’s all an act. So I’ve been discovering and rediscovering some old musicians such as Marianne Faithful and Paul Simon, who both in their 70s, have put out new work, their latest (last) album. Marianne Faithful, whose biography, has so many re-boots that she truthfully shouldn’t be here. I won’t go into detail, because that would be impossible, let’s just say she doesn’t give up. Maybe g...