To be an unloved Kennedy in MA, you have to be particularly vile. So we gave RFK a Vineyard welcome yesterday here in our tiny town of Aquinnah.

"A scrupulous reviser, whose poems went through multiple drafts before they were deemed ready to be gathered in his samizdat pamphlets": David Wojahn on the new Cavafy biography by GJusdanis and PJeffreys @fsgbooks.bsky.social
via ON THE SEAWALL
bit.ly/47V2sSd

"Part novel, essay, autofiction & poetry, the book explores the burdens of inherited trauma, gender & identity, seeking empowering forms of knowledge": @brittastromeyer.bsky.social on Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues by Kim de L'Horizon @fsgbooks.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL bit.ly/4m8fj6J

"To know how to approach. / How we see the riddle of distance / from here to where the places we’ve lived thicken.": from 4 poems in Maria Borio's TRANSPARENCIES
@worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social book via On The Seawall
bit.ly/3KaqZbT

Life folds over, or turns another way.
No wonder we are so estranged from each other.
-- Fanny Howe

"To know how to approach. / How we see the riddle of distance / from here to where the places we’ve lived thicken.": from 4 poems in Maria Borio's TRANSPARENCIES
@worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social book via On The Seawall
bit.ly/3KaqZbT

"For all its eccentricities, the novel makes a surprisingly sturdy sense of its own, and its gestures and form are more shapely than they may seem at first": my piece on Caren Beilin's SEA, POISON
@ndbooks.bsky.social via On The Seawall
bit.ly/4gv9UFU

"Part novel, essay, autofiction & poetry, the book explores the burdens of inherited trauma, gender & identity, seeking empowering forms of knowledge": @brittastromeyer.bsky.social on Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues by Kim de L'Horizon @fsgbooks.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL bit.ly/4m8fj6J

"In her wish for phoenix-like resurrection, she always admits a profound uncertainty, yet the underlying song is her compass": Valerie Duff-Strautmann on THE FIRE PASSAGE, poems by Lisa Wells @fourwaybooks.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL
bit.ly/4gmEXUd

My take on Jonathan Aaron’s wonderful “Just About Anything” @cmupress.bsky.social in @ronslate.bsky.social’s “On the Seawall”: “Aaron’s poetry, for the length of a few lines, a handful of pages, persuades us that things or people that are gone aren’t, in fact, lost.” www.ronslate.com/on-just-abou...

"When you don’t make decisions for yourself, the world makes decisions for you—large and small, which Chambers’ novel expertly traces": @mathitak.bsky.social
on GREAT DISASTERS by Grady Chambers @tinhouse.bsky.social via On The Seawall
bit.ly/48kQPns

"I thought I was finished with beauty, / having shed — given away, or sold — so much / and committed myself // to necessary objects only": from "Thirst," 1 of 3 poems by Robin Becker via On The Seawall
bit.ly/4mdquv6

"Vidyan Ravinthiran reflects on what ignorance gives rise to and how it persists, through the Sri Lankan civil war that began in 1983 and ended 2009": Calista McRae on
Avidyā @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL
bit.ly/3IiDEZM

"A rural horror story - what happens when a couple trades a ceramic cooktop in Prague for a gas stove that must be lit in a one-pub village": @coryoldweiler.bsky.social on PLAYING WOLF by Zuzana Říhová, tr from the Czech by @alexzucker.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL
bit.ly/4plMxCs

"In all her guises — mother, biologist, poet, Japanologist — Larson looks for commonality, itself a form of repair. 'We are the world’s body. There is no separation'": Melissa Pierson
on Katherine Larson's WEDDING OF THE FOXES @milkweededitions.bsky.social via ON THE SEAWALL
bit.ly/48fYKT3

The Sept/Oct edition of ON THE SEAWALL has just been published. Come on by the gallery & take a look at what we have to show. www.ronslate.com

An accomplished novelist & friend sent me this dismissal from the NEA re his grant application. This isn't the language of an arts organization. No matter, stay fierce, everyone.

"If any state fails to take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, the Reich government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority": Article 48, "Decree of the Reich President for the protection of People and State," 3/1/1933

last book: Make It Broken by Patrick Pritchett
current read: The Gossip Columnist's Daughter by Peter Orner
tbr last added: That Book Is Dangerous by Adam Szetela
next: Mercy by Joan Silber

Review: ‘L.A. Women’ is a breezy retro novel with bite — and lots of familiar characters Frenemies bearing more than a little resemblance to Joan Didion and Eve Babitz circle each other in Ella Berman's Laurel Canyon tale about creativity, ambition and reluctant motherhood.

At the LAT, I reviewed Ella Berman's "L.A. Women," about the love-hate relationship between two writers---one Didion-ish, the other and Babitz-esque---in the 60s and 70s. Beach-read-y, but it's smart about literary rivalries, sexism, and class FOMO. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Today's mail brought enticing new titles from @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social -- I'm starting with EXERCISES 1950-1960 by Yannis Ritsos whose work I've always loved and who had been arrested in '48 & tortured during the Greek Civil War. He spent 4 years in jail. Translated by Spring Ulmer.

Katherine Larson's WEDDING OF THE FOXES is due 7/15 via
@milkweededitions.bsky.social. Splendid essays. Here's "Soap: Art of Failure" via ON THE SEAWALL / (our review is coming in Sept) bit.ly/40ETyUK

Fanny Howe's work is a gift to us. My pieces on MANIMAL WOE ('21) bit.ly/3GyD4WZ & THE WINTER SUN ('09) bit.ly/4leal8Z via ON THE SEAWALL

RIP Rosalind Fox Solomon. A few words on her A WOMAN I ONCE KNEW bit.ly/4nqhKmY from ON THE SEAWALL

Today is Fernando Pessoa's bday (1888). When I visited his house in Lisbon, the docent allowed me to place a fingertip on the letter P of his typewriter.

RIP Brian Wilson. A while back, I reviewed his memoir I AM BRIAN WILSON and Mike Love's GOOD VIBRATIONS at On The Seawall / bit.ly/3TitFp5

@samuelamadon.bsky.social

Lucky pigeon.

NEW: The May/June edition of ON THE SEAWALL. Please stop by the gallery / ronslate.com