Travel releases spontaneity. You

Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full or choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Madonna dei fusi.’ You open, as in childhood, and–for a time–receive this … Read more

And I saw it

And I saw it didn’t matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds–nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries … Read more

Tattoo is the magic

Tattoo is the magic word. It hits people in a way that no other visual medium does. And it is not simply visual, but visceral. Everybody has an opinion about it and everybody has a gut reaction. And because they are permanent, tattoos raise all these issues about life and death. Don Ed Hardy

There is nothing “still”

There is nothing “still” in the remarkably visceral poems of Alexander Long’s third collection, Still Life, and nothing is at rest in these restless and edgy poems. Conversational and kinetic, these poems chart the traces left by the shifting overlays of the templates of literature, rock-and-roll, and contemporary culture. As each poem in Still Life … Read more