Newish work in the latest Denver Quarterly (v.60 no.3), thanks to Jane Huffman, Ian Cappelli, et al. Here’s the opening three entries (of thirty-one) out of “Notes Written in October.” Part of a manuscript called “Notes for General Circulation.”

Saint Dominic among the flowers, with excellent though skeptical demon behind the chair (knows it cannot bother the saint!), in the Spinola Hours, also by Gerard Horenbout of Ghent. It's his day.

Come for the alka-seltzer, stay for the singin’

The obvious (to me): second from left, back row, Anselm Hollo. Front and center A.G. Who else?

Today our newsletter readers received three pinpoint sharp poems by Javier Salvago, translated from the Spanish by John R. Sesgo. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/good-in-hi...

C.P. Cavafy “Sometimes they speak in our dreams, sometimes the mind hears them.” – C.P. Cavafy, “Voices”, translated by Evan Jones.

I saw this referred to as the Strait of Warm Ooze. Very good.

www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti... Albrecht Dürer / Melencolia I

and break the furniture and vomit all over the house.’ He added that, in order to protect oneself, ‘a writer needs to be completely unavailable.’”—the Guardian. Peace to your ashes, you mixed up old mummy. (2/2)

He lit the moon for me when I was 16. “Speaking to Penthouse magazine in 1978, Purdy said being published was like ‘throwing a party for friends and all these coarse wicked people come instead (1/2)

PM Edward Heath, Queen Elizabeth, Richard and Pat Nixon at Chequers, Pat looking as usual as if she’s about to cry. (3 October 1970)

Iraq War veteran Hugh Martin ⸻ from the Spring 2013 issue of The Iowa Review

John Loudon Gow, one of my great-grandfathers (and a Civil War veteran) with white hair and cane in Chicago. John lived in Springfield IL and old newspapers say that Lincoln danced around a ball with John on his feet. It could have happened. In any case he was obsessed for the rest of his life.

A little bit of Philip Whalen in the late Keith Kumasen Abbott's terrific caligraphy.

This woman, this (very special) guitar! Shades of John Fahey+++ #JohnFahey #guitar youtu.be/OOaKosc1cq0

Sea Turtle 🐢 Saturday mood

Join together, Finnish workers! The Worker’s Society of Perälä (my late father-in-law’s home village)

I

For some reason I’m obsessed with May Day this year

“Village Scene with Dance around the May Pole” by Pieter Brueghel The Younger

Happy May Day!

Kenneth Koch from _Thank You and Other Poems_ (Grove Press, 1962)

Blue hepatica, one of the first spring flowers in Finland. Used to be called blue anemone (and I still do)

I know Doctorow isn’t “our crowd,” our aesthetic kith and kin. But this book “about” a version of the Rosenberg children captures the weird ambivalence of the red diaper baby better than anything else I’ve read.

The coming of socialism would sanctify those who had suffered. You went out and took your stand, did what had to be done—not because you expected anything, but because someday there would be retribution, and you wanted just a little of it to bear your name. (3/3) —E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel

That was my mother’s communism: something whose promise was so strong you endured much for it. Like a woman suffering pregnancy and childbirth to get the child. The child would make it worthwhile. (2/3)

Grandma lit candles on Friday night, a shawl over her head, her hands covering her face while she prayed. When she lowered her hands, her eyes—her blue eyes—were filled with tears, and devastation was in her face. (1/3)

Not the quote I’m looking for but it does seem apropos (2/2)

If justice cannot be made to operate under the worst possible conditions of social hysteria, what does it matter how it operates at other times? —E.L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (1/2)

has yet to even be published. That tome currently lies in the rectum of HarperCollins, ready to be excreted in June –“ (2/2) —Marina Hyde

“For the next South Park season, I hope the creators give their brilliantly ghastly little vice-president avatar a papal mitre to wear. After all, here we have a man whose pick-me book on his journey to Catholicism 1/2) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I’ve always wondered whether the Ashbery poem (circa 1962) was written as a parody/homage to Wieners (circa 1961).

“We are condemned to form.”—Alice Notley www.poetryproject.org/publications...

youtube.com/shorts/oI9w3... A kind of glamour You can lend yourself Like dark sunglasses And you'll remember How good it tasted Inside the ruling classes Wasted, behind your dark sunglasses Wasted, behind your dark sunglasses

Weirdly comforting somehow today. Ulysses S. Grant memorial on scaffolding—being erected, as they say. 1920.

Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse artsfuse.org/289216/weekl...

My old flat

Well, yes—

Milton H. Greene (1922-1985) Marilyn Monroe Removing a Stocking (from the Black Sitting) LILY TOMLIN & JANE WAGNER: WIT, WOMEN & THE ART OF COLLECTING

Crypt of my third great grandmother in Sewickley PA; she hadn’t wanted such a burial but was dug up from her simple grave in what became Washington PA and reburied here in a (private!) chapel by another richer descendant

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. —Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you add an “O” before “GOP” and reverse it, you get POGO. Just saying

My image of El Lissitzky