JON CURLEY

On what is the first day of the new decade, I quote the last poem of Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) translated by Alissa Valles: FABRIC Forest of threads thin ...

Nick Tosches (1949-2019) Yesterday my f(r)iend Nick Tosches died. No, we were not close enough to be deeply woven and wound up friends, the kind of folks who...

This past spring semester, I collaborated with my New Jersey Institute of Technology senior seminar students, Gallery Aferro in downtown Newark, Gallery Afer...

(The following words are dedicated to Elena Alexander whose ideas and feedback inform them immensely. Thank you again, EA!) Last Monday, I gave a talk to the...

A Shrine for Paul Pines (1941 - 2018) Easter is or should be an occasion for revelation and ritual, prayer and reflection, pageantry and passion. My ideal de...

The Spring 2019 edition of the Marsh Hawk Review now arrives and flies with a poetic plumage of many fabulous forms. Check it out here: https://marshhawkpre...

Another cause for seasonal joy... Poet Michael Heller's thrilling new book, Constellations of Waking (Dos Madres), has just been published. A libretto based ...

Identity politics are all too often the product of conceptual drivel domains, poly-politricks offering in their activated forms a paradoxical combination of ...

When in the crowded company of neighborhood obsessives, bright-eyed neurotics, and blissed-out monomaniacs, I am ever hopeful that a few in the ranks will be...

Deadline inspiration cannot be relied upon. Given the assignment-- whether a self-imposed endpoint for one's own scheduled work or else some outsourced manda...

...Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a society largely prejudiced against immigrants, radicals, immigrant radicals, a...

The discrete categorization of artworks causes frustration when carried out to formulate--and defend-- a forceful, enforcing kind of aesthetic sectarianism. ...

"Marian was at work as usual in the Reading-room. She did her best, during the hours spent here, to convert herself into the literary machine which it was he...

Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018, my father's birthday, at age 85. His book, The Counterlife, is dedicated "To my father at eighty-five." This date will now ...

It is May 11th and this date should be considered an international holiday in honor of American Poet Michael Heller. Born in 1937, he has produced a remarkab...

I am off by two weeks in recounting the anniversary below but so be it...early it is, I am, I am, iamb. Dateline: NOW! We are now marooned in the thick of th...

Yesterday morning/mourning, getting ready for a long, largely satisfying slog of paper grading, I tucked into the behemoth of the late Denis Johnson's 2007 n...

Hot off the press, a press that is like a furious furnace generating fiery forces of radical textual radiance--PM Press--my edition of Bartolomeo Vanzetti's ...