Go down (Forsaking the lagoons of bridged Atlantis)To the mid-Atlantic ridgewhere are the crazedMagnetic fields and roped sheets, and stains(The disordered fabric of the volcanicBed chamber) and the gigantic vermicularTestimoniesand stare upon the greatPrinciple of the solid world—the originalTorment trace.Go down, for down is the way,And grapple one stone syllableOf all that frozen love’s discourseOnto …
Author Archives: hnbjr
La grande bellezza
Finisce sempre così. Con la morte. Prima, però, c’è stata la vita, nascosta sotto il bla bla bla bla bla. È tutto sedimentato sotto il chiacchiericcio e il rumore. Il silenzio e il sentimento. L’emozione e la paura. Gli sparuti incostanti sprazzi di bellezza. E poi lo squallore disgraziato e l’uomo miserabile. Tutto sepolto dalla …
Dry Heat
When I heard Muhammad Ali, the Champ, died Friday, I thought I would go for a three mile run. I figured that it would be a small thing to do for someone who had done so many big things. There had recently been a shooting at my gym so I thought I would go outside. …
Literary Lunches: Rebecca West
Today we’ll kick off what will hopefully be a literary lunch series, in which I’ll showcase a (usually) simple meal from a great book. All I had time for today was a quick lunch — a couple of slices of prosciutto di parma (Citterio, aged 420 days, Trader Joe’s; $6.49 for 4 oz.) on a leftover hunk …
The Economics of Cover Charges
Today’s post is inspired by a friend who got into an internet tussle over cover charges in his local music scene. I discovered that there wasn’t enough good writing on cover charge economics, so I give you the following: Touring bands have contacts that they insist on and that agents push get clubs and promotors to …
The Miss – Live in Louisville
Back in 2000, I was living in Baltimore and fronting a band called The Miss. We were invited to play in my hometown of Louisville at a birthday party for local musician and man about town, Chad Castetter. Being the Friday after Thanksgiving, it was a gala homecoming affair and, with about 300 in attendance, …
Our Sea
I’m glad that the Washington Post has finally decided to do a decent piece on immigration to Italy — essentially, the reason that Premesso started back in 2010, and the issue that I decided to start writing about in Italy in 2008. Their piece focuses on the Mare Nostrum law in Italy, a complete liberalization of …
Against Our Vanishing
I know this would happen soon. But I hoped it wouldn’t. Allen Grossman, January 7, 1932 – June 27, 2014. “Poetry is a principle of power invoked by all of us against our vanishing. The making of poems is a practice — a work human beings can do — in which civilization has invested some part …
You All Want a Pepsi-Coke?
I’ve always enjoyed dialects, and I’ve had the good fortune to live in a few places with strong dialect areas, from Torlak to Veneto to Cantonese. But what about American dialects? Are we too young of a nation to really have them, as our transatlantic cousins might assert? I don’t think so. I had fun …
Sorry, Charlie: Deep Parables of Consumer Capitalism
There’s no age quite as awkward as the semi-pubescent 11-14 age range which corresponds to what we now know as the middle school years. My own awkwardness at that age can probably best be encapsulated by a rundown of my lunchtime eating habits: every day, a can of StarKist albacore tuna, some saltines, and a can of …
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