My poem “Into the Silent Land
(published in New American Writing, issue 31)
has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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Under the influence
Video of one of my favorite people in the whole world—former student, current friend, & stellar writer Lorelei Lee—reading my work & her own at Evan Karp’s Under The Influence series, in which writers & artists perform work by one of their major artistic influences then perform a piece of their own work that channels that influence.
(This was among the most moving experiences of my life. No joke.)
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Being born is going blind
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Sonder < as a lighted window at dusk >
New chapbook available via The Poetry Center
A new chapbook of the long poem “First Love” was created for & is available for download on The Poetry Center‘s Chapbook Exchange here.
(With thanks to Gillian Conoley for publishing an earlier version of this poem in VOLT, to Edward Foster for re-printing it with an interview on the Talisman Magazine site, to Jeremy Mayer for the cover image of his stunning typewriter parts assemblages, & to Melissa Eleftherion Carr & Elise Ficarra of The Poetry Center for asking me to participate.)
“I will see you at the next session”
There but for grace
When patients were committed to the Willard Asylum for the Insane in Upstate New York, most arrived with a suitcase packed with whatever possessions they thought they might need for their time inside.
Willard inmates were committed any number of reasons including epilepsy, “promiscuity,” postpartum or menopausal depression, homosexuality, “shell shock,” “disobedience,” and the like.
Many were committed by family members, and most never left.
The average patient stay at Willard lasted for 30 years, & when those patients died, they were buried in graves across the street from the asylum, their suitcases locked in an attic & forgotten.
In 1995, an employee of the mental hospital discovered 400 of those suitcases, dating from 1910 to 1960.
Photographer Jon Crispin’s photographs of those suitcases and their contents are currently featured as part of an exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium, ‘The Changing Face of What is Normal.’
