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There's a funny story in John Richardson's biography, A Life of Picasso. Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking all the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You'd have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you'd go home nervous and ( Read more... )

The subject line's from "Brooklyn Blurs," a song by/in The Paper Raincoat. I heard Alex Wong perform it with Megan Slankard in a house concert back in March, and he mentioned at an Angelhouse Family Dinner that he would probably play it during his Basement gig last Saturday ( Read more... )

The subject line is from a letter Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Robert Lowell on November 1, 1974. As is this:

(For a poet, I am sometimes amazingly practical--as John M. Brinnin remarked the other day, when, after a night's consideration, I turned down taking over the late Anne Sexton's job at B.U.--Once a week; 4 or 6 people; but I figured out how ( Read more... )

The subject line's from Marianne Moore's Baseball and Writing. The two quotes below are from Elizabeth Bishop to Lowell. July 10, 1967:

Well -- the Village will rejuvenate me, no doubt. I never appear without earrings down to my bosom, skirts almost up to it, and a guitar over my shoulder. I am afraid I am going to start writing FREE VERSE next ( Read more... )

From Soshitsu Sen's Chado: The Japanese Way of Tea (1979):

The charcoal is arranged in a set pattern in the container. The long, white sticks are charcoal made from azalea branches and painted with gesso. The black charcoal is made from any of a variety of woods (20).

The artisan who crafts the scoops will usually give a specific poetic name to ( Read more... )

Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell, 18 July 1950:

Just had a visit from the Dutchman who works here & writes poetry incessantly. I hope he wasn't one of your problems too. One poem this time is about his soul fermenting in a barrel of sauerkraut. He's so grateful to God for sending him such marvelous ideas, but personally I'm afraid God is playing ( Read more... )

(First set of notes here)

Second-half standouts:

Ruth Madievsky, "Paragard": "I was in a lecture hall, explaining how the copper IUD works..."

Brendan Constantine's conversation with Alan Fox. Among BC's provocative statements:

I just had a conversation with a poet I can't name, who was very angry because they felt that the internet was flooded ( Read more... )

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I am actually in the thick of replacing a rotting deck with more house, but this quote in the March issue of Southern Living spoke to me anyway:

People get caught up in grandeur, forgetting that the best times they ever had in their lives were in tiny spaces with low ceilings and the best things ever said to them were whispered. When I design a ( Read more... )