Overheard at breakfast: “The French are so classy. I bet their word for ‘ragpicker’ sounds beautiful!”

I can be both mad about that tradlit list and mad that I’ve read so few from that tradlit list. I contain multitudes (of cliches). But Wuthering Heights? No, that’s garbage. I wish I could go back in time and not read it. Though it did get Beloved right.

The gender trouble I work with every day: "There are three main genders (rodzaje): masculine (męski), feminine (żeński) and neuter (nijaki). Masculine nouns are further divided into personal (męskoosobowy), animate (męskożywotny), and inanimate (męskorzeczowy) categories."

Sure wish Agnieszka Holland or Paweł Pawlikowski would make a moody biopic of Czechowicz's life. Even just his time in Paris or the last months of his life would be enough for an epic.

Writing tip of the day: ⌘A + Delete. #writingtip #justthetip #mac

"This poetry ain't gonna poem itself."—Me, returning to the translation mines

Thornton Wilder just made me gasp by something he wrote 99 years ago.

The first ⅓ of the yr was filled with a host of favorable rejections—some of the most effusive praise I’ve ever received about my work, yet a rejection nonetheless—but now May, w its flowers & drizzles, has set aright the natural order w a rejection’s tepidly incurious “we wish you the best.”

If you’re goin’ to San Francisco and find yourself at the nexus of Chinatown and North Beach, visit On Waverly and City Lights, 2 blocks apart through the Jack Kerouac Alley portal. They both have a great selection of books (i.e., ones I wrote). Good chance they’ll be signed too.

Overheard at breakfast yesterday: “She can call me if she wants to talk about Lil Nas X’s ballsack.”

Whitey America, you need help. Not everything you do needs to always be the absolutely most racist thing you can think of. I don’t even want to hear from you again until after you’ve started therapy.

One of the drawbacks to having studied LANGUAGE for most of my life is reaching the age when the only possible way to spell typhoon is “tyfun” but only because “taifun” didn’t seem American enough. After several minutes, I had to consult a dictionary.

Inadvertent Discursive Convergences is the name of my electro-vaporwave slowcore band.

I love the particularly British Britishism cock-up. I’m going to start using it myself, but to mean something entirely different.

Some of my friends in the garden this morning. So glad I don’t have a lawn.

Decided my next cat will be named Gorgon Zola.

I’m going to start captioning (at least mentally) photos I see in newspapers (or high school yearbooks) with “hermaphrodite struggling with a satyr.”

Such a vile document.

Translations of film titles—which ones do you hate? which ones do you love? (For a piece on @theworld.org.)

Yeah, well I won the FIFA World Cup Pultizer, so there.

More Democratic icons need to enter hospice imho. #smellyalater

under the thumb of big ass

We should celebrate the fact that now even they can’t bring themselves to say „Z̴̶i̴̶o̴̶n̴̶i̴̶s̴̶m̴̶.”

A Protestant work ethic but for Catholics.

Buyouts „offered a way out of a university [that] has become increasingly hostile to academic freedom and faculty input,” citing „UNT’s overcompliance with the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion.” www.texastribune.org/2026/05/01/u...

Gonna start shouting, „I’m tired of all this AI slop!” whenever I leave the coffeshop. Or farmers market. Or cemetery.

Rediscovering some of my most insightful marginalia.

Saw my first chupacabra today. At first I thought it was a xolo because it was a stocky, lumbering little tank. Def not a fox, boar, or opossum. Any of you folks have a clue?

Just me sitting here judging you for the Plato translations you cite in your paper.

People keep talking & writing about a supposed „male loneliness crisis,” but every time I visit my local coffeeshop I see multiple groups of men either holding hands and talking to their invisible power ranger or discoursing about „community outreach” & „fellowship” over their magic book.

Two works at auction that I wouldn't mind sharing my home with: Hugo Consuegra's 1958 Untitled (current bid: $3,000) and Takeo Yamaguchi's 1964 Yellow Assembly (starting bid: $25,000). My budget remains about $50.

Nothing indicates just how valued I am as a donor as mail from a nonprofit—soliciting donations—addressed to me „or current resident.”

I 🖤 a good IP story so I watched that video about Enigma and all its legal troubles for unauthorized use of copyrighted material. Looks like every release was met with the exact same lawsuit, but even after losing each & every one, my dude still managed to live his best life in a mansion on Ibiza.

Following the political (violence) discourse and dreaming of a ballroom of one's own.

A new Canada-based online reading group on phenomenology.

Nobody eats to live. They eat to hit their protein macros.

"at an hour like this it is especially hard to till a stony field with rusty iron to sow tiny seeds of rage blindly into the dark earth to hope for a bitter harvest from bitter seeds" Exquisite poem "vesper" by Iryna Shuvalova, trans. Uilleam Blacker.

Wish the pop culture world would stop conspiring to force me to learn the difference between Tyler Perry and Tyler Posey or even what a Taylor Swift was.

Update: oh ffffuccckkk, now I have to write a book on Levinas.

Serious question: how do we feel about the word "swarthy"? To me, it always seems like it's trying to hide its own racialized coding. But is "dark" or "dark-skinned" any better? In most cases, it seems that it really just wants to be "tanned" (bc rural laborers etc) but that's not the word used.

"Jews breaking in to Auschwitz"?!?! Bingo!!!

Damnit. Now I want to write a book on Levinas.

On the anniversary of Paul Celan’s death, here is my translation of his „In eins”: frankgarrett.online/2010/07/at-o.... „he spoke / to us a necessary word in the hand”

I went out tonight. It was glorious.

"These plaques ensure that no visit to Berlin will ever be too fun. They are also the most decent, and most properly scaled, Holocaust memorials I’ve seen, anywhere, just the opposite of the misfired maze near the Brandenburger Tor…” www.slowtravelberlin.com/in-prenzlaue...

„But we gotta keep throwing rocks at the tank of violent patriarchy. We might not be stopping the machine. But maybe we can crack a window.”