Jason Collins Comes Out

Jason Collins (© Kwaku Alston/Sports Illustrated)I continue to be tremendously impressed and moved by the courage of Jason Collins, a current NBA journeyman center and free agent, who announced yesterday in an article ins Sports Illustrated's current (May 6, 2013) online issue, "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." With those words, he became and now is the "the first openly gay" male athlete playing in a major American...

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Proust/Degas/Surrealist Drawing @ the Morgan Library

Over the last few months the J. P. Morgan Library in New York mounted three shows, each of which was worth the price of admission. Rather than a long disquisition I'll offer some brief thoughts on each, along with pictures, to give a sense of why I was glad to have caught them.First, the Library memorialized the 100th anniversary of the publication of Marcel Proust's (1871-1922) Du côté de chez Swann (1913), better known in English...

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In the Garden

For some reason I seem to recall hitting the garden much earlier in prior springs, but between work and the weather, it was not until this weekend that we were able to put plants into the ground.As in previous years, we planted herbs and vegetables in the back, but no flowers this time. (C found places for new rose bushes in the front.) Between natural die-offs, the hurricane last fall, the long chilly (but not freezing) winter, and the slow-arriving...

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Poem: Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson (1965-1993), not the recent Pulitzer Prize winner but the late lyric poet bearing his name, was one of the promising British versifiers of his generation when he died of HIV-related disease in the early 1990s. A native of Stalybridge, Cheshire, he arrived on the London literary scene in 1984, and cut a stylish figure, while also producing poems very much in keeping with the mainstream conventions of that era. What began to set him apart...

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Poem: James Schuyler

James Schuyler, by Fairfield PorterI don't think I've ever posted a poem by James Schuyler (1923-1991), a poet I was quite fond of when I was younger, and whose name and work are probably as well known as those of his great peers in what came to be known as the New York School of poetry: Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, and of course, the still-living, extraordinary John Ashbery. Schuyler probably was the least well-known during...

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Poem: Prageeta Sharma

Prageeta Sharma,Lantern Review's Flickrphoto streamThese are troubled times, but then one could easily say all times are so, depending upon one's perspective. There is an unsettled air that Prageeta Sharma (1972-) captures in her poem below, which also feels very appropriate to this moment, particularly in terms of its thematization of violence, particularly in the presence, in this sonnet, of firearms, and in the interpersonal violence it depicts,...

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Digital Public Library of America Launches Today

Digital Public Library of America homepageUtopian and pragmatic: these are the two poles that Robert Darnton, the eminent historian, Pforzheimer University professor and director of the Harvard University Libraries, identifies as guiding the process he and others dreamt up years ago, then began collaboratively developing two years ago in 2011, and which will come to fruition, when the Digital Public Library of America launches today."Háw-che-ke-súg-ga,...

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Poems: Willie Perdomo

Willie Pedomo,by Gabrielle RamírezThe following two poems, though nominally night-focused, are really occasions for me to post work by Willie Perdomo, one of today's vital poets. I met him years ago when I was teaching on the Lower East Side, and introduced his work to my students, who like me not only fell in love with it, but grasped in it a way of seeing and understanding the world they were living in, while also learning how to write and read...

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Poem: Aaron Shurin

I cannot find my copy now (it is hidden among the shelves of writing study books that this summer will enjoy reorganization), but Aaron Shurin's (1947-) A's Dream (O Books, 1989), was one of those revelations that serendipity in a bookstore brought me. I had never heard of him or his work, pulled the book off the shelf, realized quickly that I could not put it down, and then read it a number of times, letting its lush, lyrical language seep...

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In the Life @ Whitney Museum Today!

For any and all in and around New York, a wonderful event will take place this afternoon! Please come if you can.BLUES FOR SMOKE PERFORMANCE SERIES  GREGG BORDOWITZ: “IN THE LIFE”A READING OF WORKS BY GAY BLACK MEN FROM THE 1980S AND ’90SSUNDAY, APRIL 14, 2013  2 PM   FILM AND VIDEO GALLERYFor “in the life,”* artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz will host readings from the literary work of gay, male, African American poets...

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Random Photos

So much has been going on of late, so the postings are arriving like a glacier. Here are some random photos from the last few weeks.At a phone store, 14th StreetRunway model, Fulton StreetCar crash, NewarkStreet musician, 14th StreetSalvation Army officers speak with a homeless man, 14th St.Sixth Avenue, with the Freedom Tower looming in the backgroundGrand Central Terminal and the Met Life building behind itManhattan from Bayview Park, Jersey CityInside...

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