"I summon the loves that, racked and followed by summer's scythe, embalm the evening air with their white inactivity." - Rene Char, "Invitation" (translated by Mary Ann Caws)

In the sky of men, the star's bread seemed to me shadowy and hardened, but in their narrow hands I read the joust of these stars calling others. - Rene Char translated by Mary Ann Caws

valentines, you say? m.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOl...

14 February 2026 Reading Notes Gore Vidal lobbied for FP's «Voices» in the 12 May 1983 edition of the New York Review of Books. "Frederic Prokosch: The European Connection" Collected in Gore Vidal, «United States: Essays 1952-1992», pp. 413-427.

Prokosch’s portraits of heiresses, literari, and avant-garde-ists is as superbly styled as it is brutal. Modernism in its posthumous voice. Playing tennis with Ezra Pound, hanging out with the Mann twins, a who’s who of the 30’s and 40’s.

Leonard Cohen — Valentine's Day 1966

The world is what it is but books continue! Agents + writers: looking for deeply researched and imaginative nonfiction manuscripts about the South, for publication in 2027/28. Literary nonfiction, personal/reportage & cultural criticism are highly welcomed. DMs open for pitches or [email protected].

And students want this.

I am going to sound like a crazy person when I say this but the Endymion crowd at Orleans and Carrollton where me and the kids are has been… really nice and polite and stuff?

“Because of Piaf's louche life - the lovers, the booze, the drugs - the archbishop of Paris forbade her a mass…” - Stuart Jeffries “Rien de rien. Je ne regrette rien.” - Edith Piaf www.theguardian.com/music/2003/n...

The Berlinale doesn’t need a Wenders right now— it needs a Fassbinder. We all need a reminder of why art shouldn’t just be “entertainment” or “content” but instead must offer radical contestations of the given. Our world is unsustainable. Platitudes are useless.

As if issuing platitudes isn’t a form of politicking on this planet where “the judgement of history” underwrites our art and communities. . . www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

I love Bill’s poems.

Free Granta Therapy - I'll bite! @grantamag.bsky.social A few days left...well it would be rude not to jump onto the couch / chair / cushions / sacred circle etc

I have no idea when I said “bad kitties” (hint: I didn’t) but it’s wild to realize that Bluesky takes animal metaphors personally. I love cats and dogs and goats and donkeys. Please don’t harness me into yr anti-poetic pet wars. I hate college football!!

happy Valentine’s Day from Jamie MacInnis 💘

I’d mix it up a bit. Cats are the gorgeous stoners who maintain a firm suspicion of the world and cuddle selectively. Dogs are the restless, tamed man-eaters who eat absolutely anything including books. One howls at the moon; the other admires it.

I should like to take the time to admire the use of imitative form in 'as bad as being at sea in a calm' and 'cumbrous cargo of words.' But alas! It is you, Reader, I would wear out. - William Gass in a footnote, reminding me why I adore him

Here for the red vibology

a beautifully written and powerful piece from University of Minnesota Law professor Emmanuel Mauleón on the stakes of how the legal profession responds in this moment. lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

🖤 youtu.be/46Wu4o_NkJY?...

I used to think cats were sexy because I read a lot of Colette and wanted to be a slinky but then I realized cats are complete in themselves— they lack an appetite. Cats are lackless. Dogs can never get enough: their lack is loud. Now I think bumbling lackadaisically like a dog is the sexy part.

Missing my boi on these travels 🥹

My relationship with my dog is so much more exciting than the one I had with my cats— and this is because Radu resembles me in that he lacks a purr, lacks a capacity to sit smugly in personal oblivion, lacks an eazy-peazy release valve for restlessness & pleasure.

When the man tries to “contextualize“ Spinoza for me and I am distracted by the subtext of his cheese-professing socks

on the curtain on braids

When your beloved frenemy, Debussy, orchestrates your work rather beautifully . . . youtu.be/aamD4SyNKd0?...

My personal favorite: “Ocean Park #17, 1968: Homage to Diebenkorn” www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

I love how close we are to building LLM agents that carry and reproduce the exact same memetic grievances as does Scott Alexander and Curtis Yarvin lol

If justice was a concern, then Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and Larry Summers and all the Netanyahu-supporters in Congress would be on trial. Justice in the US is a lie and a racket. #freeleqaakordia

I agree that every religious group has supremacists. I disagree that "state power" is the thing that makes ethnoo-religious extremism worth discussing or not. The potential for real world violence is what I'd use as a barometer of relevance. Both scale and severity.

I can no longer bear the aggressiveness of poetry, and I do not wish my deeds to be investigated. I would like to be an opened knife: the inscrutable. - Szilárd Borbély translated by Ottilie Mulzet www.alinastefanescuwriter.com/blog/2026/2/...

Me today, missing the fragment that would allow me to pull back the bow and create the tension needed to launch the arrow.

Here is Henri Cole’s unbearably beautiful “Sycamores” for anyone who needs it today 🖤

I love this story by Benjamin Kunkel in Granta-- and not just because one of the characters is named Clementine (which is the name I most wanted for the middle mammal, until she refused it profusely by being very un-Clem-like in utero!) Micah suits her well. granta.com/whatever-cre...

We had a schedule change! Our first poet will be @alinaetc.bsky.social!!

I'm working with The Writer's Center on two new book clubs that focus on independent authors and presses!! We'll read a new book each month. Then the author will join us, read an excerpt, and answer reader questions! Read with us!

I think there are too many linguists who approach language with a sense of awe and wonder. For balance we need some linguists who are disgusted by it, who approach it with trepidation, harbouring ill will towards it

One of our greatest living poets. Never has the cumulative power of the serial poem been so beautiful & rich. Great piece on Mackey: commongood.cc/reader/natha...

Nathaniel Mackey again— with the burs and brrds from Conjunctions

No word but shit for the shit we were going thru, an evaporative trek along an evaporative trail was all it mounted to, up no sooner up - Nathaniel Mackey 🖤

I love that Bataille’s raunchiest made this horny-lit list alongside Ernaux’s THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY. nymag.com/strategist/a...

Thrilled by the Larry Levis revival, I am. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Mimi Smith’s “Maternity Dress” (1966) reminds me of that linea neagra that magically disappeared at some point in the wilderness of nursing and infants.

Laynie Browne

Super grateful to everyone who showed up in the snow and cold at Riff Raff last night. It was a joy to meet you— a joy and a balm. Thank you again and always for supporting poetry and goofs like me who bumble through language desperately .🫶🏼❤️

In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal.