BBC ROLLING STONES TONIGHT ~

 

THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Yale 2026

JULIA ALVAREZ ~

 

First Marriage

We rented a yellow house

on the edge of a schoolyard

I could not see on

foggy winter mornings —

rolling mist, dim lights,

a honk, a muffled motor,

nothing to do but wait

for the world I knew

to be released again.

After you left for work

I'd hear the children's cries,

pleasure and pain so mixed

I couldn't tell whether

to rescue or reminisce.

Midmorning, the fog would lift:

sun shafts beamed like searchlights

through the bars of the jungle gym,

the chain-link swings, the seesaw,

the silver tongue of the slide.

On the schoolhouse windows

pilgrims and turkeys filled the panes,

then Santa and doily snowflakes.

Everywhere I read the signs.

Late afternoon, when school was out,

I'd cross the street to the empty yard

and tip the seesaw back andforth,

run my fingers down the slide,

then set to motion all the swings,

just to hear the chain links clink.

On A Hill Above Your House

Late night I search for your house

in the dark valley below.

The children's lights have long gone out,

and the lovers' yearning hands

have touched the fond familiar spots

like grazing animals at dusk

returning to the glowing barn.

You sleep alone in a darkened house.

While up at midnight, insomniac,

I wonder which might be your home

among the shadowy clumps below.

A car goes by, an unstrung light

moving along a strip of road.

Above, the mirroring autumn sky

reflects the twinkling neighborhood.

By habit I look up to wish

on the first star that I see.

But when my eye fastens on one

my mind is blank of anything

but the thought of you below

your long lean body lost in sleep.

Dream Girl

I dreamed of you making

love to a young version

of me with a younger

version of yourself,

and I wonder if our dreams

are the whims skimmed off

our richly committed hearts

or disclose our true desires?

Should we throw caution

to our dreams and wake,

youthful middle-aged lovers,

forsaking our aging partners,

existing all other loves

to rewrite them in a new hand

now that we understand

what it is to live by heart?

I don't know any answers,

but I dreamed of you touching

the tender skin of a girl

I could no longer be,

so young was she, so innocent

of these and other questions,

so quick to say love

and mean by it forever.

_____________________

Visitations

Knopf 2026

NICK CAVE'S UNTIL ~

 

GLENN LIGON ~

 

R E A D   M E

        Hauser & Wirth 2024

ON THE ART OF FACT IN FICTION ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Norton 2025

MERLE HAGGARD TONIGHT ~

 

COVERT JOY ~

 

R E A D   M E

     New Directions

     2025

SIMON ARMITAGE ~

 

[ Silver Hook ]

Lazed

            all 

                        day —

morning's

            dishwater

                        lapped

against

            bedroom

                        windows,

birdsong

            tinsnipped

                        each

outsize

            hour

                        till

evening

            sloped

                        off —

night

            slanted

                        in.

______________________

Simon Armitage

New Cemetery

Knopf 2026

THE MIGHTY SPARROW ~

 

T H E   M I G H T Y   S P A R R O W   H A S   F L O W N

WHIPPED CREAM RE-WHIPPED TONIGHT ~

 

        Anthony Marinelli

IN THE CIRCLE OF ANCIENT TREES ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Greystone Books

     2025

JULIANA SPAHR ~

 

from Ars Poeticas 

There was once a prairie.

It's never coming back,

as in it will never be whole again.

There's the bison.

They can come back.

But the bison plus the prairie,

as in the bison moving over the prairie

with the rumored speed of a race horse,

that too is never coming back

until we change the well-intentioned

hopes of institutions of research,

the less well-intentioned grants

for rewilding from banks and governments,

into something psychotic and large

in its demands,

by which I mean the end of capitalism.

Really, I don't want to land this poem so hard,

land it on a word so cliched as "capitalism,"

but I don't know how to say otherwise

about this predicament we are in

where there is only one way out.

That it's an idea that feels impossible

to include in a poem tells us something

about the new fears of imagining we

have yet to embrace.

________________________

Ars Poeticas

Wesleyan University Press

2025

RADIO TARIFA TONIGHT ~

 

Radio Tarifa's classic debut album

DIDION & BABITZ ~

 

R E A D   M E

Simon & Schuster 2024

ICONS OF THE FANTASTIC ~

 

R E A D   M E

   University of Delaware

2025

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN COLTRANE ~

 

        September 23, 1926

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI ~

 

R E A D   M E

   Eris 2025

ICELANDIC POP ~

 

R E A D   M E

       Reaktion Books 2025

Patricio Guzmán, Filmmaker ~

 

Patricio Guzmán

1941 ~ 2026

Mr. Guzmán in Paris in 1987. He spent his later years living in Spain and France, but his films continued to focus on Chile.Credit...Julio Etchart/Alamy