Island
The moment one says it is a moment
of perfection, it is something less
of perfection, it is something less
An Invitation to a Group of Noble Dames
Alice Toklas survived for twenty years after the death of Gertrude Stein, a period that began in loneliness and ended in loneliness. In between she made a sufficiently full life ...
The Visitors
When I was twenty-five I went to London with my then fiancé, to visit his grandmother. Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham was the youngest daughter of artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. She left ...
1977
Once upon a time — or as the French say, il était une fois — I spent a summer in Paris as the guest of a friend of my father’s. I had ...
Berlin: The City and The Court
While the Emperor is, by nature, simple and self-effacing, the Empress is complicated and makes her presence felt.
Transatlantic Episodes
The Lethargic lay in the Southampton harbor, looking reluctant to pull out. Napier saw his baggage swung on board and went down to investigate his cabin. Unable to afford a first-class passage, he had insisted on traveling second-class against the advice of his friends who urged him to travel third.
The Train
You’re like her, the way she stood
beside him on the railroad platform,
steadfast in out-of-date clothes,
not knowing what it meant
Icehouse Burgess
I grew up in a Kansas City icehouse, loving dogs with their furry muzzles when they’d sniff past the ropes and peeling posters of a morning for a wad of sausage casing, or even a handshake in the dank gloom where the duffers and me slung steaming blocks onto the loading platform straw. I did love those teary-eyed mongrels more unconditionally than I’ve ever thought to love any human or other vertebrate, not to...
November 1952
Maria, our new housekeeper, who was working for the Leslie Fiedlers in Forio, phoned yesterday afternoon from Rome and we went to meet her at Frascati. She nearly talked my ...
To John Ashbery
We made it here, which is about as much as I can say for the trip. I’m afraid FP is emotionally unable to think of a drive as anything but another Dunkirk. In New London I did manage, by dint of taking Bruno for a quick trot, to peek into an ...
Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse
The high point of Simon and Schuster’s massive publicity campaign
for Jacqueline Susann’s second “torrid roman à clef potboiler,”
The Love Machine, was a party given for 500 booksellers at the
1969 ABA convention is Washington, D.C. ...
The Shape of a City, translated by Ingeborg M. Kohn
The shape of a city, as we all know, changes more rapidly than the heart of a mortal. However it often happens that before being discarded, left behind to become ...
Lunch Break
Upon my arrival in the city I slammed my mattress down on the ground and tried to fall asleep, but the screeching of the elevated trains kept me awake, so ...
Overheard
“Worship as many as you can see, and more will appear.” – Peter Sheffer
“You seem to be in dire need of romance.”
“In trying to corner the last pea on my plate” ...
Dear Aunt Sally,
Dear Aunt Sally,
(H.S.H. the prince Jann of Winshatz-Lundberg-‘Sandburg’-Gluxberg):
This ties off a loose end of our business, I do hope you enjoy it. It is yours. The paper one will come ...
Italy – First Impressions
Outside the airport where the sun blazes, a brief but startling intro to how temperatures would rise during the day, freeze in the morning, then roast in the afternoon. A jacket’s a burden, no if’s and’s and but’s or ways around it. Up the hill where the school was a car blasted ...
Notes before a trip
At this time I have five cats; Bodice, Susie, Spooky, Holly and Mrs. Brown. Brenda Eddy at Main Street Feed, Durham 349-0410 is the best person to contact for help ...
The Crazed Pig of Conques
Edgar Oliver’s short performance of The Crazed Pig of Conques is here recorded as part of a live radio show, “Where have you been?” hosted by Brooklyn, NY artist Jeff Stark, ...
