John Latta
@lattaj.bsky.social
đ€ 803
đ„ 556
đ 871
Poet, birder. Used to bloviate at Isola di Rifiuti.
reposted by
John Latta
about 15 hours ago
Mystical accidentalism for sound-hemmed naught in nightâs botanical glossary -Susan Howe
0
3
1
A walk through Media, Pa. to Glen Providence Park where every year I walk along a wee creek and look and listen for Carolina chickadees, slightly grayer and smaller and whose calls tend to be noticeably quicker than the black-capped chickadees of Michigan. Another ârarityâ (for me): black vultures.
about 22 hours ago
1
10
0
reposted by
John Latta
Meropi ( Nancy Meropi Ypsilantis Dupree)
about 23 hours ago
Sun-moon
0
3
1
Out of Susan Sontagâs journal for 3 December 1961: "The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsĂ©dĂ© 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic 1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence." Sontag died twenty-one years ago today, aged 71.
2 days ago
0
8
0
reposted by
John Latta
7 days ago
âModels of style: the swearword, the telegram, the epitaph.â -Emil Cioran (quoted from a French documentary film about him)
0
12
1
reposted by
John Latta
7 days ago
Cioran said, âWe are all deep in a hell of which each moment is a miracle.â It made me think of Issaâs haiku, âWe stroll on the roof of hell, gawking at flowers.â
0
23
5
A friend writes to say Mick Abrahams died a few days back, guitarist and vocalist for Blodwyn Pig. I recall how I loved the song âDear Jillââoff the 1969 album, âAhead Rings Out.â Never tired of it.
loading . . .
Dear Jill (2006 Remaster)
YouTube video by Blodwyn Pig - Topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wua0ONzE29s
9 days ago
0
2
0
Out of Ange Mlinkoâs finely-printed new chapbook _Darkroom_ (Foolscap Poetry, 2025). Intricately sounded (some sidelong end-rhymes: slab / squab, Myrmid- / pyramid, unhoused / composed) and moving by means of a sort of hopscotch continuum of metaphors (the archer godâs maillot jaune seeming
10 days ago
3
37
9
A singular page out of Henri Michauxâs _Ideograms in China_, translated by Gustaf Sobin. âNo longer to imitate, but signify nature. By strokes, darts, dashes.â And: âThe sign in Chinese . . . no longer in any way mimetic, has [in a hauntingly canny phrase] the grace of its own impatience.â
11 days ago
3
20
7
Lyn Hejinian, the third part (of thirty-seven) of âThe Distanceâ (in the 2008 volume, _Saga / Circus_). All clarity and grace and nuance in the sentence-ry, and impeccable pacing controlled by the line. âIt is always safe / To predict variability.â
15 days ago
0
6
0
Out of _Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly_, edited by Yilmaz Dziewior and Achim Hochdörfer with Arthur Fink. Two photographs: Twombly by Rauschenberg, Rauschenberg by Twombly, both c. 1952.
16 days ago
1
10
0
Tethered. Out of the terrific exhibition catalogue _Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy TwomblyÂŹ_, edited by Yilmaz Dziewior and Achim Hochdörfer with Arthur Fink, Rauschenbergâs 1953 âUntitled (Elemental Sculpture)â and Cy Twomblyâs 1959 âUntitled.â
17 days ago
1
13
1
Last night: the puckish Yannick NĂ©zet-SĂ©guin conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, all Brahms. The captivating way NĂ©zet-SĂ©guin works without a score andâwith no obvious downbeat, no fussinessâseems to assemble and shape the various musical strands through a perspicacious corporeal charm.
18 days ago
0
6
0
My reply to âHappy Holidays from Cornell University,â an email signed by President Michael I. Kotlikoff and Provost Kavita Bala: âAfter Cornell University's cowardly, dishonorable, and inappropriate settlement with the Trump administration, I wish to have no further contact with it, or its minions.â
19 days ago
2
11
2
The endlessly novel Emily Dickinson (b. 10 December 1830), out of a letter (c. 1875) to Olive Stearns: âThat a pansy is transitive, is its only pang.â And: âMany an angel, with its needle, toils beneath the snow.â
20 days ago
1
8
1
Out of the lively Paris Review interview with Eliot Weinberger conducted by Srikanth Reddy (in âThe Art of the Essayâ series):
22 days ago
2
10
1
reposted by
John Latta
Peter Huestis
23 days ago
The great pop abstractionist Stuart Davis was born on this date in 1892. Composition, oil on canvas, 1935, from the Smithsonian American Art collection:
1
19
3
1/ Gleanings out of Francesca Wadeâs _Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife_ (2025). Stein, in the _Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas_ (1933): âIf you are way ahead with your head you naturally are old fashioned and regular in your daily life.â Akin, as Wade points out, to Flaubertâs dictum in a 1876 letter
23 days ago
2
8
0
Haphazardly, out of a book received today at work, two etchings by the 24-year-old gappy-toothed moptop Rembrandt Harmenszoom van Rijn: âSelf-portrait in a Cap, Laughingâ and âSelf-portrait in a Cap, Wide-eyed and Open-mouthed.â Both 1630.
25 days ago
3
11
0
Dipping into Francesca Wadeâs _Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife_ (2025) I find a rather amply-reported metaphor Iâd somehow missed. According to heiress and memoirist Mabel Dodge Luhan, Stein had âa laugh like a beefsteak.â Lovely, in a puzzling kind of way.
25 days ago
3
7
0
reposted by
John Latta
Bill Manhire
26 days ago
Still Life with Wind in the Trees
1
28
5
Thieving, in snatches at work, readings of Lorine Niedecker poems (out of the Jenny Penberthy-edited Collected Works (2002)). A pleasure: to shuffle variants out of Penberthyâs generous notes. Hereâs an untitled 1948 piece, in the version it appeared in the New Mexico Quarterly, in 1950:
26 days ago
4
14
2
reposted by
John Latta
28 days ago
Gustaf Sobin
0
12
2
I keep thinking about the (bold, cocky) opening of Rousseauâs Confessions: âI have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator.â And how it immediately reminded me of William Carlos Williamsâs first line to Kora in Hell: âThe sole precedent 1/3
29 days ago
1
7
0
reposted by
John Latta
about 1 month ago
Ian Hamilton Finlay / Swallow, 1998
0
11
1
Frank OâHara, out of an entry in an ephemeral journal (in the Donald Allen-edited Early Writing (Grey Fox, 1977)). In the previous dayâs entry, OâHara writes of âthe direct apprehension of the thing itselfââa striving for presence likely to be thwarted precisely by âstyle.â Or by âidea.â (See WCW.)
about 1 month ago
3
22
2
reposted by
John Latta
about 1 month ago
Gustaf Sobin, from âThat the Universe is Chrysalid (Blakeâs Birthday)â
0
9
3
A cold lazy afternoon of mostly aimless and desultory reading brings me somehow to Tom Clarkâs early book Stones (1969), and a quiet poem one used to recite late in bars (along with, louder, with ready irony, John Berrymanâs âDream Song 14â (âLife, friends, is boring. We must not say so. . . .â)):
about 1 month ago
1
35
2
A lovely (and funny) anecdote out of Ronald Johnsonâs 1976 Vort interview, conducted by Barry Alpert (reprinted in _Ronald Johnson: Life and Works_ (National Poetry Foundation, 2008)). I would love to read a collection of the letters exchanged between Ian Hamilton Finlay and Johnson.
about 1 month ago
1
19
7
reposted by
John Latta
Contemporaries at Post45
about 1 month ago
âïž đ Today's the day of our C.D. Wright cluster! Ed.
@aliciawright.bsky.social
ft. 11 contributorsâthe list is too long to fit into a single post! But you're in luck, bc the thread below tells the tale of this exceptional homage for an exceptionally talented poet!
post45.org/contemporaries
loading . . .
Contemporaries â Post45
Post45 seeks to reinvigorate the erstwhile convention of academic critics not only describing past traditions but also actively intervening in current tastes. It provides a forum for writers to conver...
https://post45.org/contemporaries
1
22
10
Nigh-random core sample out of Eliot Weinbergerâs longish poem âThe Ceaseless Murmuring of Innumerable Beesâ (in the Spring 2024 issue of the Paris Review). A lengthy interview with Weinberger, conducted by Srikanth Reddy (in âThe Art of the Essayâ series), is found in the Fall 2025 issue.
about 1 month ago
1
13
2
Another sharp percept of poetryâs high processual work (âwords in a cranial theaterâ!) and slow-arriving âgetââout of Merrill Gilfillanâs _Old River New River: A Miscellany_ (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019):
about 1 month ago
2
8
1
A Guy Davenport letter, printed under the title âCorrection . . .â, out of The National Review (October 26, 1973): In my obituary of J. R. R. Tolkien [Sept. 28] the sentence âIt was the rule of Tolkien's art that he invented nothing cynicalâ should have read 1/2
about 1 month ago
1
17
2
reposted by
John Latta
phillip crymble
about 1 month ago
Derek Mahon, born on this day in 1941
1
15
5
reposted by
John Latta
Jacob Wren
about 1 month ago
âIâm not a serious thinker. Iâm a writer: thatâs very different. I think a writerâs intelligence has to be alive, has to be incomplete. It has to carry contradiction. It has to be sort of haphazard and amateur.â - BenjamĂn Labatut
0
65
18
Guy Davenport (b. 23 November 1927): âI can claim the effort, at least, of making prose ideograms in emulation of Poundâs poetic ones. An ideogram gathers components into a molecular structure that has charm rather than demonstrable sense.â (The claim, too, of Eliot Weinbergerâs essayistic prose?)
about 1 month ago
2
9
1
reposted by
John Latta
c.c. o'hanlon
about 1 month ago
A rare glimpse into a poet's observations, via this November edition of
@thearsonista.bsky.social
: Kerala Notes by American-born Kim Dorman
@kimdorman.bsky.social
, who lives in India and whose haunting Kerala Journal was published four years ago by
@corbelstonepress.bsky.social
.
loading . . .
Kerala Notes by Kim Dorman
Photos by Kim Dorman Through a grimy windowopen fieldssmall houses by trackspeople standingor sittingin doorwayswatching the train . . . 6.30 p.m. muezzinâs call to prayer . . . The battered, rusteâŠ
https://burninghousepress.com/2025/11/21/kerala-notes-by-kim-dorman/
2
14
3
Lovely. I wonder if anybody reads St.-John Perse much anymore.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
1
12
1
Begun lately to carry around a pocket-sized notebookâfor jotting down the unanticipated interior verbal onslaught, or (more rarely) overheard vocal aperçu (or sludge). The activityâs somehow got me looking again at Merrill Gilfillanâs short collection of notes âAlfresco.â 1/2
about 1 month ago
2
11
2
reposted by
John Latta
K. L. Davies
about 1 month ago
0
1
1
for
@rloden.bsky.social
Re: Stuart Peterfreund. I see now the book I should be looking for is The Hanged Knife (Ithaca House, 1970), not Harder Than Rain (1977). The latter is, sadly, rather humdrum to poor, exhibiting vestigial period-style ticsâawkwardly âsurrealâ similes 1/3
about 1 month ago
2
3
0
reposted by
John Latta
about 2 months ago
Manuel Ălvarez Bravo / Untitled (Hair on Tile Floor), 1940s
0
5
1
New York again, as it slips off into its distant manic slough and revery there to the east. Or, rather, Brooklyn. Two thingsâcontextual fillers in a show somewhat crowded with suchâout of the âMonet and Veniceâ exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.
about 2 months ago
1
4
0
Quick nod and amen for Roland Barthes (b. 12 November 1915), all style, no system: âthe fragment breaks up what I would call the smooth finish, the composition, discourse constructed to give a final meaning to what one says, which is the general rule of all past rhetoric . . . the fragment is (1/2)
about 2 months ago
2
9
0
Saw Ira Sachsâs new movie _Peter Hujarâs Day_, based on the recently-found transcript of a lost tape recording made by Linda Rosenkrantz (author of _Talk_ (NYRB, 2015)). Two things: Hujarâs amusing and gently-dismissive report of photographing an Om-insistent and somewhat pedantic Allen Ginsberg.
about 2 months ago
4
4
0
reposted by
John Latta
about 2 months ago
Graciela Iturbide / Sin tĂtulo, JapĂłn, 2014
0
15
4
reposted by
John Latta
about 2 months ago
Graciela Iturbide / Antes de la matanza (Before the slaughter), La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992
1
4
1
âStuck in Flushing.â (Annals of things I never thought Iâd have the opportunity to say.)
about 2 months ago
3
4
0
reposted by
John Latta
about 2 months ago
Graciela Iturbide / Benarés, India, 1999
0
8
2
Two photographs by Graciela Iturbide, out of a tremendous exhibit at the International Center of Photography, in New York City. âEl señor de los pĂĄjaros, Nayarit, MĂ©xico,â 1985 and âRitual, BenarĂ©s, India,â 1998.
about 2 months ago
1
39
4
Load more
feeds!
log in