Just before the solstice

Posted on December 20, 2018February 3, 2019 by admin

window lights–home base

The weather is December–bright some days, gray others–chill even when the temperature reaches in the 40s. The weather is December and now we stay inside and look inside. One of my students titled her chaplet-Internal Struggles and yes, there they all are. But out of that internal struggle, comes external personality–and with great hope, a good one.

This has been a year of travel, teaching, keynotes and risks. Many risks. I am glad to making them at my age–most of my friends are retired and doing interesting things: new kinds of jobs; more artistic work; volunteering; more travel. Many are grand parents now. As an unmarried woman with no children, I do my best with my nephews.

Two residencies kept me from New York City for a total of 9 months! First, thanks again to Rauschenberg Residency in January and February this winter. Captiva Island is a place of great beauty, serenity and a wonderful place to make art. Then later in July and August I went to France-to my first international residency. Both places were on the ocean–the Gulf in Florida; the Mediterranean in France. Even though I live in New York and see the Atlantic on occasion–just go to Coney Island, there was something truly transforming about the coast of France. It may have been the light.

And light has been so needed–the light that illuminates, that sparkles, that bring out the best. There are other kinds of light that appear to do these things, but we all know that’s not even close to true. And we also need the darkness that allows the sight of stars, the moon, the myths of the sky–and this year I got to see many celestial light sky un illiuminated.

The Super Moon, Captiva Florida

And in France, I saw the lunar eclipse. It was magical. And there were shooting stars. I can only say how thankful I am to the BAU Institute for the opportunity and the Camargo Foundation for housing us. The time in France was also time away for the U.S. and I started in Paris with a visit with my good friend Margo Berdeshevsky. She wined, dined and walked me about the city and I finally got to see Shakespeare and Company where I was able to buy Margo’s book for the large and diverse poetry section. While there, my poem “Seraphim” was about to be published by The New Yorker and there was no place to get an actual copy of the magazine there. The French really know how to put we English speaking, English using people in our place. But my poem had been recorded and is at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/30/seraphim. Last night in Paris, we dined with Alice Notley, the perfect way for a poet to prepare for the morning train ride from Paris to Marseilles. During the residency–I got to travel to Marseilles and to Aix-en-Provence where I was the perfect tourist.

Bookstore in Marseille, France, August 2018

In France I stayed in the Panorama Building at the Camargo, Foundation on the 3rd floor with a huge terrace and the light was bright. . On a day as gray as this one I so miss that light and the heat–which could be oppressive except for the French families cavorting in the sea.

my terrace at Panorama Building, Camargo Fdn.
Cassis, France

I am glad to have gone to Chicago, Denver, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Rutgers, New Brunswick, Winston-Salem, Provincetown, Connecticut Circuit sites, and Buffalo. And it was great to read at The Schomburg for the Pauli Murray Book Launch, Poets House for the Fay Chiang Tribute, CUNY Grad Center for the June Jordan conference, at the Poetry Foundation with Kimberly Lyons, and for Belladonna. Moreover, via Patricia Nicholson Parker and Art for Arts/Vision Festival, I performed with Jason Hwang at Roulette and Luke Stewart at Weeksville Heritage Center. These were amazing experiences. I want to thank all of the hosts for conferences, workshops and reading series. The people who develop these programs work very hard to bring a range of poets and writers to their audiences so all of these fine people are in my Angels Book List.

The Vision Festival, Jason Hwang Duo Roulette, May 2018

This year took away some seriously important voices esp. women’s voices: Barbara Barg, Ntozake Shange, and then Meena Alexander, whose struggle with cancer I knew about. We were to have read together with Kimiko Hahn for Meen’a newest book, Atmospheric Embroidery–alas her final hospitalization took place the day before that reading. I miss her. I miss Barg, who grew up in our mutual hometown of Forrest City, Arkansas. And yes, I am one of those people who happened to be at the premier of For Colored Girls at The Public Theater before it went to Broadway–all who were there saw the stage levitate. We did. For that, I salute Ntozake who navigated fame’s stormy seas –sometimes well, sometimes not. So glad she left quietly because she was not quiet in life and for that every woman poet should show gratitude. On the shortest day, remember those who brought you inspiration, joy, challenge or opportunity and thank them.

Ntozake Shange and Patricia Spears Jones 2016

Ntozake Shange and Patricia Spears Jones photo by Coreen Simpson

What we need and who has provided UPDATED

Posted on November 2, 2018February 3, 2019 by admin

Ntozake Shange and Patricia Spears Jones photo by Coreen Simpson

UP DATE: Earlier this year, I recorded my favorite Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet for the Library of Congress. It was supposed to have been posed in April, but there were some issues with approval from Ms Brooks’ Estate. Finally, that happened and the poem is posted. Like Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Margaret Walker, Alice Walker, Ms. Brooks’ work looms large in my psyche. And it is great to see the generation that I am part led by the now late Ntozake Shange, Thulani Davis, Akua Lezli Hope, Marilyn Nelson, the late Monica Hand, Elizabeth Alexander, Claudine Rankine, Erica Hunt have continued to explore the power and poignancy of Black women’s lives and examine Black women’s thought. In my post, I include my elegy, meditation on Akilah Oliver, who was an extraordinary poet. Where straight or queer, we are poets of imagination, innovation, and cultural constancy. I thank Gwendolyn Brooks for her fierce foundation for us and Akilah Oliver for her experimentation and her joy–both are truly misssed.

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetry-of-america/american-identity/patriciaspearsjones-gwendolynbrooks.html

Gwendolyn Brooks-The Whisky of Our Discontent

Early October I gave a keynote at LIT TAP and and it allowed me to think about culture, privilege, power and how we as Black women poets often provide import ways to think in words. The link is at the end of this post.

Now two powerful women writers and thinkers and innovators in this culture: Ntozake Shange and Maria Irena Fornes have passed. Shange was an extraordinary writer and performer. She perfected the use of choreopoem, a performance trope that was in full sway at the start of the 70s esp. by women poets and dancers. As a member of the audience at the premiere of For Colored Girls at the Public Theater with my best friend Debbie Wood, who knew the composer, I can always claim being at what was truly a new and powerful moment in the theater and for Black women. And we needed something new. We needed that play. We still do. Not everything Shange wrote is as distilled and life altering, but her work in total is now part of world literature and she gave every Black woman poet an idea of what it means to be so terribly successful and how difficult it is to maintain artistic vision, integrity and health. Maria Irena Fornes was a queer Latina who created her own version of theater. She also taught two-three generations of theater artists including my good friend Lenora Champagne. She was 88 and had had Alzheimer’s for several years. At least the downtown theater world has continued to produce her work and watched over her. Zake was only 70 and she had been ill for several years. Even so, she recently published a new bilingual collection to much acclaim.

Women writers, artists, poets, thinkers are often overlooked, neglected, misrepresented or dismissed. And yet, we persist because we have voices and we just gonna sing.

https://electricliterature.com/the-poetry-of-queer-black-women-shows-us-how-to-move-forward-9a01ef66f32c

Getting back in the groove

Posted on September 14, 2018February 3, 2019 by admin

Schomburg Center twitter feed

September 18—I and Kevin Young will read poetry byPauli Murray, the acclaimed lawyer, activist, Episcopal priest (she’s a saint in the church) as part of The Startling Life of Pauli Murray at the Schomburg Center. The main people will be the great scholars Patricia Bell-Scott and Brittney Cooper. 6:30 p.m.www.nypl.org/events/programs/schomburg. Free.

September 29—as part of 100,000 Poets for Change, Larissa Shmaillo has organized a Women’s Reading at the Cornelia Street Café -the proceeds go to the Democratic Party.We join Lee Anne Brown, Elaine Equi, Trace Petersen and Rachel Hadas.29 Cornelia Street. $20 cover. 6 p.m

This is what I sent to my email list on September 11. It was a way of getting back in the groove. I am still amazed that I was away from my home base here on the 3rd floor of a tenement building in Bed-Stuy. And at every place, I was on the water: Florida, Massachusetts and then the South of France. I’d never done an international residency, but the BAU Institute organizers were really helpful and my fellow residents are “old hands” at residencies so they were super helpful.

It has taken me time to get used to American food again. I ate such amazing vegetables and fruits while in France and so inexpensive was the food (other than cheese, cheese was pricey) that the sticker shock at the KeyFood took my breath away. Oh the peaches oh the apricots, oh the melons. Oh Oh Oh. We did several potlucks and I have to say, the visual artists were the best cooks. Cassis was craggy and the Mediterranean sparkled and I loved the light house. It was fun watching the French vacationers–whole families and their dogs walk up and down the hills, hang at the beach and listen to the dj’s boring disco selections for the young people. ABBA will never go away Never.

But I am back. I am teaching a poetry workshop at Hunter. I have a range of readings and events but not as much out of city traveling as done earlier this year. So I will participate in a reading for Barrow Street Press, Belladonna Collaborative, etc. and will participate in tributes to poets who were also good friends: Fay Chiang, Bill Kushner and Lorenzo Thomas. October is always the month of ghosts.

Yesterday I voted for Cynthia Nixon. I knew she wasn’t going to win, but I just wanted the party establishment to know that there really are a third of the party that questions the manner and policies of the establishment. I am pleased that Leticia James prevailed over 3 other candidates for AG. I have been a supporter since she ran for City Council representing the district I lived in. I so hope she prevails. Walking around on a rainy, foggy day and seeing folks going to vote in the primary was sobering and encouraging. There were definitely more people voting and it turns out 23% voted which is twice as many people as done 4 years ago. And progressives are starting to make serious inroads. This lifts my spirits.

Spirits and ghosts–it feels like I am working with spaces that limn the living and the dead. Years ago, this would have terrified me, now it seems as if those deep into language, into observation are working the lines between the many worlds we may inhabit. Ancestral memory is a real thing. Conversations with the dead are powerful and useful. And calling the names of those we love clothes us in compassion. That is why I loved the movie, Coco. For years I have talked abut calling names and so the names of Fay, Bill and Lorenzo will be called. And it has been a joy to learn about Pauli Murray–her life of service, study, writing and organizing is a HONORABLE LIFE. If I can do half of what she did, I’d be more than proud. Next Tuesday, we give her props. I am honored to have been asked.

The city is loud and every time I go to Hunter I plunge myself into the land of the Young (loud) and the last stubborn roses always amaze me. But I miss the terrace of the Panorama Building at Camargo Foundation. Loved drinking wine and looking at the stars. Loved looked off to the beaches and hills during the day. My last look before I left makes it hard for me to get back into the groove.

Returning to Fine Arts Work Center

Posted on June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 by admin

I will be teaching WEEK 4 for FAWC’s Summer Program. Sophie Cabot Black and Ada Limon will be there too. And its July 1-6, so I’ll celebrate the Fourth in Provincetown! Here’s the information.

http://web.fawc.org/summer-program/basic-and-bold-poetry-workshop-0

June is way too chilly

Posted on June 9, 2018June 9, 2018 by admin

Garden on fence, Macon Street Brooklyn

The virtual wake for Anthony Bourdain continues even as I write. His loss hits so many different kinds of people–am convinced he had no idea of the good he was doing, of the lives he made more interesting. Plus, like many a woman poet of the hetero variety, I was like totally smitten. He was that handsome, smart, vibrant, testosterone charged male of my dreams. It is good to have standards. And alas, the standards have been mighty low given the ongoing dispatches from #MeToo. I sort of understand the old dogs and their tricks, but it is these new ones–who raised them is what I keep asking myself since wolves are better behaved.

We live in such harrowing times, we really have to learn more than “self-care”. We must truly care for each other as family as friends and in our community. Just because we are governed by corrupt and mendacious people does not mean that we have to be corrupt and mendacious and unkind and crude (unless crude is the only way seen or heard) with each other. Mother Shelley, our rector a few Sundays ago talked about what it meant to be “Beloved” and to be part of a “Beloved Community”. You do not have to be a Christian or any religious person to be beloved. You just have to be. We are responsible as humans for planetary health. We are really doing a terrible job and Pele in Hawaii is letting us know that.

But often love is not enough. And while there is much said about celebrity and the challenges faced by them, the CDC has pointed out in a recent student that suicide has increased ACROSS ALL SECTORS. I have friends who have committed suicide. I have friends who told me they were seriously thinking about it. I’ve not gone that far, but any person can be a point where the challenges, anxieties, terriblenesses of the day, the week, the month, the year can overwhelm. To deny that is to not deal with our capacity as humans to take lives, starting with our own.

But death in its physical finality has overwhelmed our poetry and literary community over the past few months–am still so very sad about Barbara Barg, Jewish, punkrocker, Southern–we grew up in the same hometown–she was an activist, fearless, a total radical. She is no longer in pain, but had her medical team been more vigilant, she might still be alive. Damn the anti-ACA people. Paul Ryan, et al there are so many curses on your persons and homes and the deaths of friends like Barbara adds to them.

For all this sad talk, there is always (so far, for me) light. Teaching workshops for Rutgers University Summer program; performing with Jason Hwang for the Vision Festival at Roulette, prepping for works at Fine Arts Work Center. But first, the mourning of good people both known to me and known world wide must take place.

Sunrise, Captiva Island, FL Feb. 2018

I AM AN AMERICAN POET –American Poets Congress launches

Posted on May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 by admin

Dog Tags by Jane Hirshfield on tree in “the Jungle”

Heard on NPR an Edward Hirsch’s poem read by Shaquille O’Neill that Kwame Alexander discusses early in the morning. The poem is about basketball and life and of course O’Neill would love it. It is old school, the whole setup. Populist Black American poet talkes POETRY with slightly bewildered, slightly awe-struck NPR hostesss. 50 years ago it could have been Langston Hughes chatting somebody up and say Mickey Mantle intoning Carl Sandburg. Media representation of poetry, American poetry continues this odd desire to make all things plain and clear as if the masses can’t look up a work on their dictionary.com app. Glad that O’Neill and many athletes read and write poetry. But you don’t have to be a celebrity to add value to poetry. You have to care about language, culture and the work required to make even the simplest seeming poems profound.

On Sunday, April 29, American Poets Congress presented 15 poets reading work at Poets House where Lee Briccetti noted that poets are the unelected legislators of the world, and in which each of us said our names and then I AM AN AMERICAN POET. The poets intoning are Amanda Deutch, Anne Waldman, Cecilia Vicuna, Cynthia Kraman, David Henderson, Edwin Torres, Erica Hunt, James Sherry, Michael Broder, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Purvi Shah, Tai Allen, Tan Lin and Vincent Katz. James Sherry, Vincent Katz and I co-curated this and what a line up.

Co-cuarators I am an American Poet reading at Poets House, 4-29-18

It was our way of standing on a ground that feels like our home and not the one that is promoted out of the damaged and dangerous minds of party in political power. Poets, what can we do?

We write. We think. We ask questions. We answer them, but not often. Some questions remain unanswerable. But the questions keep us searching for that answer say to ending racism, ending injustice, promoting fairness and honesty, offering succor and candor and compassion. When do we do these things, how do we, what are the words. Working with two white men on this project was challenging to them and to me. Working with men who are use to directing ordering guiding even as they seek to be progressive and collaborative is challenging. But you know what I learned to deal with the challenges –if we are to begin to build another way of looking towards the future then working with and challenging privilege is going to be very important. Dismissing people because of their lack of political purity or their unenlightened attitudes means having to find others to replace them who may or may not be better. You don’t change unless you’re put in a situation where change has to take place or you don’t progress. Americans do not want to be seen as mean spirited, hateful, killer cops on every corner, but until Americans remove the killer cops on every corner, and stop backing mean-spirited and hateful policies, well that is what America is to most of the world right now.

But poets know this and poets write about language, how it is used, abused, trampled over, and made to build up mean spirited, hateful and poisonous policies that ultimately will make us poorer, sicker, our air and water toxic, our understanding of safety, security and defense enablers of militaristic fantasies. Yup, this is a bad era for Americans, for the world given the drift to the right.

Mural-San Antonio

But poets being poets keep language alive. We keep making those questions, whether we are bards or beats or Black Arts devotees, we know that every phrase that damage, the psyche, scars the culture must be overmatched with language that heals, that thrills that poses a fresh way of seeing and being.

POETS ARE THE BEST, but I would say that because I am a poet and this is the last day of National Poetry Month. And it is great to know that whether you’re Black White, HIV negative or positive, Asian, Latinx, Native, queer, gender nonconforming, lover of animals or only lover of flowers or you speak 5 languages or only one-if you still work language to find the truth there in, I SALUTE YOU. Oh and we can write about basketball, drone warfare, police brutality, love affairs, sleepy Sundays, capitalism, poverty, music, tea, the genome, etc. If there are words, there is poetry.

leaving the bubble–Rauschenberg Residency 29

Posted on February 14, 2018February 14, 2018 by admin

On Friday, I return to New York City, to Brooklyn after 5 weeks on Captiva Island in Florida. The Rauschenberg Residency has been an enormous gift to my mind, my spirit, my writing and creativity. The staff is so open and helpful and skillful and happy to be working in a place that is all about allowing artists to make whatever work they can while here. I stayed in the Print House with an International Artist , Minouk Lim,

on North Captiva–boat trip day

who has started to make huge waves in the art world. I met dance theater people who have worked or known people I’ve known from the theater and dance world. One of the artist is disabled but makes super huge sculptures. One of the writers here was working on the first major book on Norman Lewis. Every residency I’ve done reminds me of how many amazing poets, painters, dancers, composers, actors, scholars, etc there are and how this culture allows a few of us to be part of places designed to take care of our needs, our desires. RR29 has lived up to all it has set to be be. A place where the staff will help you do what you want to do or show you that you can do it. Amazing. I wrote new poems. Drafted essays on June Jordan and poetics. Read Angela Jackson’s bio of Gwendolyn Brooks, Eudora Welty’s wonderful book One Writers Beginnings and of course We’re On: A June Jordan Reader (Alice James Books), a must have for serious students of American poetry. And Laura Penny murder mysteries. With fellow residents I saw The Post where Meryl Streep chewed up some lovely scenery and journalism is celebrated.

Now I have to leave this beautiful bubble and return to the “real world” but of course this too is the “real world” just not the one we get to hang around in too long.

patio The Print House

Dog Tags by Jane Hirshfield on tree in “the Jungle”

Beach House writer’s studio

sunset spectacular

beach front

beach

the Jungle

The sun is in Aquarius-chaos abides and so does beauty

Posted on January 22, 2018January 22, 2018 by admin

At least in the seat of power, where chaos has abided since January 20, 2017. However, I am not in chaos. I am in a writing studio at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida. The sun is bright, the air cool, there are shells found on the beach in front of the famous Beach House, where my studio resides. Last year one of the gifts received was this residency. I am now into my 2nd week and am working on prose and poetry, revising and starting new work. I am also listening to my fellow residents, many are visual and performance artists and one is a art historian working on a book about the great Black artist, Norman Lewis.

Gates to Main Studio, Captiva, FL

I left New York at the end of a cold spell (cold snap was totally not apt) but filled with great energy. The past few months have been about revisiting my life as a poet and writer, but also forging new projects and gaining new friends, not back for a sexagenarian. Over the past year I’ve worked to create a group of poets and cultural workers who are deeply interested in wresting the ideas and ideals of American identity from the current crop of crooks who claim it–good way to use alliteration. We have much to do. At this point we are calling it the American Poets Congress and we will be rolling out programs and activities that explore the concept, but also actively support Voter Registration and progressive candidates and agendas. The #Resistance has many elements and we are but one. It is good to part of efforts to combat not only this current noxious political climate, but to really think through the many ways that American ideals have lifted up citizens and people worldwide. I am mindful that the original pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist (without the in god we trust bit put in by the Eisenhower people) and the Memorial Day was organized by former bonds people to honor the Union Dead. Our national history is complicated and often violent, but when I think about the labor organizers who fought against child labor, when I seen the children of Birmingham, they were my age or older at the time, when I think of progress and forward thinking I see these great efforts from the Left and we need name and claim them and often. I grew up in the Delta in one of the poorest counties in the United States, I know what poverty looks like. I know how racism works and who is advantaged by it. What is happening now is the culmination of decades of ideological build up with all the stereotypes, bad ideas on top of White Supremacist thinking rolled into one ball of bad behavior i.e. our president. Sad, but we must work to gain and sustain power at the local and state as well as national level. It’s going to very very difficult. But as many women who marched this week noted “we are in it for the long haul.”

And I am a poet who has been in it for a long haul and I am pleased that some of my efforts have been recognized, even celebrated. Here where the Gulf shimmers and the Bay shines, it is beauty that makes me happy to be alive and working. Today is Richie Havens, Lord Byron and Sam Cooke’s birthdays-my kinda men. Beauty.

beach, sea, Captiva, FL

HAPPY HOLIDAYS–leaving the ROOSTER Year

Posted on December 23, 2017December 23, 2017 by admin

Joy Harjo and me, off site reading, 2017 AWP DC

This has been one of the most amazing years in my whole life. I read at venues that deeply connected me to the American poetic tradition: The Walt Whitman Birthplace; the Poetry Center of Passaic Community College; the UA Poetry Center; the Fine Arts Work Center. It has taken 4 decades of work to get to these places, but I am the poster child for persistence and persist I did. I thank all of the organizers and audiences for their hospitality and generosity and embrace of my work. In February, I was at AWP on a panel about capitalism! And I read from TRUTH TO POWER from Cutthroat Journal, one of my fine volumes emanating from political turmoil of these times. But more importantly, I got to hang out with Joy Harjo-we have known each other for 4 decades and this year she received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the most prestigious for American poets and then I received the Poets and Writers Jackson Prize–little did we know that on the day before my birthday in February.

Selfie with Lee Briccetti, dir. of Poets House

In May I celebrated with many of the bestest friends over 3 generations at the20th Century Association in mid-town on day of perfect weather and with my face composed by the lovely lady at the Saks Lancome counter to receive the $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize. What an amazing gift –the dollars help, but the recognition was the most important thing. And it was a joy to share the moment with so many people who just wanted to celebrate. This on top of the gift of a residency from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. It seems that people found me and decided that it was my turn to get some of the glittering prizes. I worked hard for these gifts. I am pleased to have them.

And I have to say it was amazing to hear Bill Murray read my poem “Life Lessons” at the Poets House Gala.

I’ve used Walt Whitman as a way to engage writers to think about the current political situation through the lens of Whitman’s prose! It works. It worked at FAWC; it worked at Gemini Ink; it worked at the Poetry Center. I will continue to use Democratic Vistas as a piece to argue with and utilize.

And I used it as a way to enter teaching a graduate poetry workshop at Adelphi University, where I was treated with respect and where resources were presented to me. I had wonderful students and easier (but more expensive) commute.

Anthology honoring Gwendolyn Brooks-so glad to be in this.

Because of my work since the 1970s with a range of poets and artists, I too have embraced the necessity to organize against the current cultural political stance as clearly seen in conservative politics and media. So I’ve been quietly organizing a group of poets to start the real serious work of insisting on what American identity is. We need to take identity back from these narrow minded bigoted and greedy racist, sexist, homophobes who now run way too many things and claim their Americanness. So look out for projects from American Poets Congress, we are going to do some serious things in conjunction with the many powerful things that are happening in this nation. #Resistance is importance, but our Insistance on what should be American ideals, mythologies, identity–that’s going to be the fight for our future.

I thank you for your encouragement, your talent, your fierce belief in the better in us. I was so glad to see my family in May–my brother, sister and I visited our mother’s grave for the first time together since 2013 when we laid her to rest. My siblings are accomplished and spiritual and loving and hard working–we are our mother’s children. They are blessings in my life.

Mama”s grave, Forrest City Ark. Memorial Day, 2017

I have great faith in my Church Community, the members of Saint John’s Church in Park Slope have opened their hearts to many who are truly down trodden and broken. There has been much healing there. But I really have great faith in the poetry and arts community. We do important things just by demanding language that speaks truth. May you and your family have love, light and laughter in this year’s end. May we all have renewed strength to do the work we need to do as creative and compassionate people in 2018.

New York is very much alive

Posted on November 4, 2017November 4, 2017 by admin

At CUNY Grad Center, Victor Hernandez Cruz, David Henderson, Ammiel Alcaly

Empire State, Halloween

New York City is very much alive. While 8 people died from a terrorist attack even as tiny ghouls, smurfs, pirates, heros and sheros walked about with huge bags demanding candy. Meanwhile those with little or nothing on shivered in the chilly Halloween weather.

New York City is very much alive. While the mayoral race is on, many people are learning what they can and cannot do politically. Politics in this state must change-new people should be allowed to run; new voices need to be heard. Too much is done as if this was the 19th century.

New York City is very much alive. At the CUNY Grad Center Victor Hernandez Cruz read from his latest book and one of his oldest and best poems to a group of grad students, fellow poets like Don Yorty and me and then he sat down for a public interview. It was fun.

New York City is very much alive and moving and dealing with possible deaths and awful disruptions and yet the masks and costumes; the candy and liquor; the poets and critics were all out and about. Truck drivers, shoe bombers, radicalized racists won’t stop the music of any great city.