BLOGS!!!

Deepa Krishnan, a friend from India, has a wonderful blog called Mumbai Magic.
http://mumbai-magic.blogspot.com/

Kirby Olson, who posts comments here and loves to argue, has a blog called Lutheran Surrealism.
http://lutheransurrealism.blogspot.com/

The best blog is Ron Silliman’s. His article on encyclopedias, including my own Poets’ Encyclopedia, was quite brilliant. He did miss the fact that despite much homosexual eroticism, the book is a testament to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker--consider Daniel Berrigan and the late Eugene McCarthy. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox who treadeth out the corn.
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

Note that all these blogs are on blogspot. That has become the standard, perhaps because of Ron’s influence. Poets who have blogs have them on blogspot.

Enough of the People All of the Time

I’m more or less convinced the Democrats are going to blow the mid-term elections. I so feared President Bush’s reelection in 2004 that I agreed to readings in Paris and Frankfurt to avoid witnessing that step to America’s suicide. In the event, I’m sure I felt as miserable in Amerika Haus in Frankfurt as I would have in a TriBeCa loft. The morning after Reagan was elected I went bird watching. My friend was ebullient. Her boyfriend had laughed all through the election returns, and the funniest part, he said, was I would never get another grant. I knew this couple was extremely wealthy. We remain friends. Nevertheless I thought their reaction was merely odd. Subsequently however there were articles in the Village Voice to the effect that Artists Space, the Franklin Furnace and Unmuzzled OX were on the Reagan administration hit list. Again, I had written for the Voice in the ‘70s, and the falling out was so utter, I didn’t even bother to look at the articles covering that matter. What nonsense! I thought. Only years later in conversation with the head of Artists Space did I understand that for some reason Unmuzzled OX bugged Ronnie Reagan; or, at least, there had been “leaks.” I pray that this present president is similarly annoyed. But I pray further and fervently and seriously that he may some day soon relent his ceaseless war on Iraq and the American middle class.

North and Norther and Who Cares?

I returned to New York after a trip Down East only to learn my aunt died and I now have to put snow tires on the old Town Car and drive to northern Ontario. Down East I saw a whale in the Passamaquoddy Bay and visited FDR's summer home on Campobello Island. My aunt died in Orillia, Ontario, a town made vivid by Stephen Leacock in "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." After Orillia I drive norther to a nursing home in Sudbury to see my mother. Years ago in another life I had a friend who was something of a motor mouth and she would deliver long monologues on her troubles and intersperse these monologues with a pet phrase she doubtless heard in some movie: "Who cares? Nobody cares." I'll be back in New York God willing before Richard Morris' memorial November 30 at the Small Press Center.