Writing

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Current Affairs, Essays, Gay, My back pages, Race, Writing

tiny love story/New York Times Sunday Oct 22, 2023

October 24, 2023

Architecture, Art, Current Affairs, Museums/Galleries, Music, Theater, Writing

Comes another year

January 21, 2014

There’s a certain slant of light, Winter afternoons— That oppresses, like the heft Of cathedral tunes Emily Dickinson Winter is the cruelest season, though for me it’s not so much about the cold (though we’ve had our chilly moments, this time of year our apartment often feels like summer). What kills me is the darkness. …

Literature, Writing

Dickinson riffs on summer

August 7, 2013

No, not Angie. Emily, the original Goth Girl, sums up summer beautifully in this poem, courtesy of DailyLit: A something in a summer’s Day As slow her flambeaux burn away Which solemnizes me. A something in a summer’s noon— A depth—an Azure—a perfume— Transcending ecstasy. And still within a summer’s night A something so transporting bright…

Current Affairs, My back pages, New York, Vespers, Writing

Summer’s Lease

August 30, 2012

The giveaway happened this morning. It came in the form of a sneeze—several, actually, all so forceful that my coffee flew out of my cup into my face. No burns, only embarrassed, accompanied by NY1’s confirmation of my suspicions: ragweed had launched its ugly spores into the air. Zyrtec, take me away. In this way…

Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature, Vespers, Writing

Carlos Fuentes, “The Old Gringo” novelist, essayist, 1928-2012

May 17, 2012

“The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns…

Art, Short Cuts, Sketches, Writing, Writings

Dig Two Graves

March 14, 2012

The sound of the wind was strong. It was that, and what felt like sudden warmth that made Christina sit up, then shield her eyes from the sharp light. She’d fallen asleep in the field. How long had it been—an hour? Minutes? She yawned. The inhalation rephrased the moment, reminded her why she’d come back…

Art, Current Affairs, Gay, My back pages, Politics, Travel, Writing

Another Page

July 2, 2011

Live from New York: this morning as a family of starlings chirped me into cognizance, I thought, the past is present again. Funny—it remembered the first day of my Woodstock residency almost a month ago, less evocative of home than a clue to the sheer volume and diversity of bird stock in that neck of…

Art, My back pages, Writing

Retrieving My Enthusiasms

June 7, 2011

It’s a chipmunk world, and I’m just living in it. At the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock where I’m doing a month-long residency, the animals have it: with their rust-colored coats, those cute chipmunks ripple through the grass like glints of bright copper; cats (domestics named Celeste and Bob) strut across the lawn at night, their…

Current Affairs, Religion, Theater, Writing

You wish to have the curse reversed?

May 7, 2011

New York In A Tizzy Dept: The Times was ablaze this week over the City University of New York’s decision to deny Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Tony Kushner an honorary degree over his alleged inflammatory remarks about Israel. This morning the paper reports their repentance, after other past recipients like Michael Cunningham and Barbara Ehrenreich threatened…

Current Affairs, My back pages, Travel, Writing

Home Fires

July 17, 2010

I’m a memoirist; in my mind’s eye the past is a series of boxes filled with people, events and places that time recasts over and over. Depending on shifts of perspective and mood, the land of what-used-to-be can emerge in ways that can baffle, annoy or overwhelm. In Cincinnati, the city of my birth, my…