August Kleinzahler

Motion is not a condition but a desire to be outside of one’s self and all desire must be swept away so saith fatso Gautama bus-like under the shade of some shrub in the Deer Park in some grove some municipal greensward chewing a leaf that has left him stoned as a stone stone-like mouthing this sententious drivel some errand-boy some rich man’s son dutifully sets down on a dusty...

Well, I’ll start with where born which is no doubt where I’ll end – a section of low land on the Rock River where it empties into Lake Koshkonong, all near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Nature is lush here, I feel as tho I spent my childhood outdoors – redwinged blackbirds, willows, maples, boats, fishing (the smell of tarred nets), tittering and squawking noises from the...

Per le donne famiglia Paciotto-Piernera & Jeff-e

The beauty – the way the swallows gather around the Duomo for a few moments at dusk then scatter, darting away across the Vale with its checkerboard pastels dissolving into smoke along with the hills beyond. We saw it that one time from the Maestro’s apartments, through a little oval window above the piazza while that awful...

April of that year in the one country was unusually clear and with brisk northeasterlies ‘straight from the Urals’. Their ancient regent at long last succumbed and laid to rest after much ceremony. Sinatra was everywhere that spring, in the hotel lobbies, toilets, shops – ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’, name it. On TV a...

The best bar in San Francisco reopened for business the other day under new management. But it’s no good. They’ve got it all wrong. For one, the place is too bright and cheerful now. The new owners have installed all manner of lighting and cleaned up the mural over the bar. It looked better with sixty years of smoke stains, a kind of patina. Now, it just looks like what it is: a...