Category: Commentary
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The Sixties Redux
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Although John Updike called the Sixties a “slum of a decade,” each of us draws from the tree of life, savoring its juices idiosyncratically and differently. For me 1968 and 1969 were memorable years in terms of pain, angst, high anxiety, acting out, being immature, growing, evolving, fucking up. It is…
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“I Am Life, Mother. . . ” — Hair
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I just caught “Hair” on TCM last night. I had seen it in 1979 twelve years after it was produced on Broadway and, in my mind and experience, ten years after the close of the Sixties; for me the 70s were post-apocalyptic and a very drab decade, although I was…
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I’m Looking out my Window and at This moment
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When I read recent reviews of Down to a Sunless Sea I feel not a few of them are so skewed that I cannot imagine what is going on in the reviewers’ minds. “Mortise and Tenon” which is essentially about a controlled and repressed young boy now leads a reviewer to…
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Reading Poets and Writers
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Jane and I were perusing the most recent issue. I was looking for contests to enter with my latest book. Jane was reading selected poets. I scanned an article by a pontificating ass. We soon agreed that the poetry was dreadful; I composed a poem at the moment which reflected…