Monthly Archives: April 2012

Flying Over the Catskills

(This essay appears in the Spring 2012 issue of The Country and Abroad.) Isn’t a vacation an adult version of running away? Mine always leave me wishing I didn’t have to return home to some drudgery or other. My dread … Continue reading

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Blood Brothers: A Poem Inspired by a Werewolf Double Feature

Blood Brothers Remember the werewolf double feature at the old porno theater on upper Broadway? The seats had no room for our knees; sticky paint covered gum barnacles. We howled at the full moon slipping free of bruised clouds, then … Continue reading

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A Poem for the New York Knicks of my Childhood

Twenty-One Such a bruising game, driveway basketball: hip-checking allowed against the garage, rose thorns stealing the dribble down the left side, crazy ricochets off the low eves, no out-of-bounds except the tomatoes. To win, you risked scraped knees, black eyes, … Continue reading

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Zombies Invade National Poetry Month on WAMC

Every so often, Stuart Bartow appears with Paul Elisha and others on WAMC’s Vox Pop radio call-in show to read poems. To begin their April program for National Poetry Month, Stu read my poem, “Why I Love Zombies.” You’ll hear … Continue reading

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Abbie Hoffman on the Woodstock Festival

(From Abbie Hoffman’s Woodstock Nation.) If I had to sum up the totality of the Woodstock experience I would say it was the first attempt to land a man on earth. It took an awful lot of people to pull … Continue reading

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Two Train Wrecks—Hayden Carruth’s and My Own

I suppose that no subject is new if you have an encyclopedic knowledge of poetry, but I don’t, so I was tickled to find this poem by Hayden Carruth that linked us in an unusual way. Who knew others had … Continue reading

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For Levon Helm

(Michael Perkins and I are finishing up work on The Pocket Guide to Woodstock. The sad news that Levon Helm is in the final stages of cancer means that we’ll have to drop the following passage about his Midnight Rambles … Continue reading

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Three Poems About Cabins

Poem of the Forgotten I came to this place a young man green and lonely. Well quit of the world, I framed a house of moss and timber, called it a home, and sat in the warm evenings singing to … Continue reading

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Two Fish—Elizabeth Bishop’s and My Mother’s

In my early twenties, when my ambition to become a writer was still nine parts yearning to one part writing, I came under the sway of John Updike’s great gift for describing things in painterly detail. For years, I believed … Continue reading

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Two Poems About Boys Eating Cigarettes

The Boy Who Ate Cigarettes Some said he lived under the Mill Street Bridge, burning cancelled checks and lotto tickets to keep warm. Other said he stayed behind the town’s tattoo parlor, pushing old syringes up the banisters, just to … Continue reading

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