Tuesday 146: Poem
Success For a novelist, means the ability to call one book a failure. For the poet, means you are allowed to be quaint.
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Tuesday 145: Thought while running
I'll be brief: In more than one of David Foster Wallace's works, he features a consumer product used for some reason other than its intended use. I wouldn't call it a preoccupation, but it's approaching motif status: In the long short story
Tuesday 144: What we'll talk about when we talk about what it was like
To fall asleep lately, I've been listening to a BBC podcast called "In Our Time," in which the host--the placid, grandfatherly voiced Melvyn Bragg--engages various scholars and academics in discussions of popular history, science, the humanities, and other general curiosities. Subjects include the 30
Tuesday 143: Odds n' the end
Picking up the pieces on a rainy Wednesday. I found myself listening to the experimental band The Books the other day, and watched a short documentary about their process. An animating preoccupation that drove the music was conversation—the idea that any juxtaposition is really a discourse. You put one
Tuesday 142: Paperlife
I have a tried-and-true method for pursuing things that require some willpower: Start early, and don't anticipate. When I started running consistently, it was late fall. The holidays were right around the corner, and with them the new year, which was an obvious time to adopt
Tuesday 140: Annoying
I recently finished Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, a novel that follows episodes in the middle aged lives of characters in Strout's fictional town of Crosby, Maine. I didn't really like the book that much, but I'd say what I found a bit
Tuesday 139: Poem
Lunch Someone stole my jacket once in this café straight off the back of this teak chair and here we are again scanning the menu QR code at the white table ordering just coffee for now thanks and the beautiful waiter vanishes into yellow air wind dull against our faces
Tuesday 138: Poem
Breaking news They let me know over the phone, while I was walking: There was an issue at the parade. You always had me so calm in a crowd I’d be this pelt cap tight in the mayhem of girls, breathy moth-like in skirts, melting. Their voices important,
Tuesday 137: A new home
Hi! It's been awhile. I'd explain, but what would be the point? After more than 10 years in New York, I moved to Mansfield, Conn., which pains me as a native Bostonian, because Connecticut sucks. Yes, it's beautiful here. I'm seeing birds
Tuesday 136: Wha' happened!?
So clearly, the second half of poetry month did not go as planned. I got Covid—for what I honestly believe was the first time; I’ve never tested positive before—on my trip to Boston, and was somewhere between semiconscious and miserable for like a week. I’ve recovered
Programming note
I’ll be traveling over the next few days and away from the computer. April posts will pause, and I’ll be back next Tuesday.
Tuesday 135: The act of running
Poetry month 2025, No. 9
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Tuesday 134: The act of reading
Poetry month 2025, No. 8
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Tuesday 133: Amelia Territory
Poetry month, No. 7
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Tuesday 132: Freedom
Poetry month, No. 6
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Tuesday 131: Entering Tenochtitlan
Poetry month 2025, No. 5
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Tuesday 130: The reedy marsh
Poetry month 2025: No. 4
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Tuesday 129: Invocation of the muse
Poetry month 2025, No. 3
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Tuesday 128: Outside, night
Poetry month 2025. No. 2
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Tuesday 127: Q train, Atlantic Avenue
Welcome to poetry month, 2025. No. 1
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Exciting Announcement
It’s been hard keeping this to myself for so long: I’m super excited to finally launch my most ambitious passion project to date. A few months ago, while I was listening on YouTube at 2X speed to an interview with innovative financier Sam Bankman Fried, I had a
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Tuesday 126: Brief aside
Here’s the main point, in the event that you have neither the time nor the energy to deal with this today: Please contact your local elected representatives today and demand the release of Mahmoud Kahlil. I’m an American who doesn’t have much in the way of an
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Tuesday 125: In Process
I’m doing a terrible job of adhering to the advice of successful Substack writers and posting irregularly (or not at all, really) because I’ve been working on a longer piece of fiction that I have yet to name. In the interest of being a better poster, here is
poetry
Tuesday 124: Two Poems
Brief study, Morning Sun (1952) Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedRemember, if you wash the windows first, you’ll wash them forever. Outside, dark mutter leans out the casement. The border state becomes a perch. Why’s this part wet, sis? She knows her way