Byline: Joel Newberger

Susan Howe in “Middle Air”

November 22, 2013 is when Susan Howe and David Grubbs sit in Woolworth Hall. Susan Howe and David Grubbs are at Princeton to perform their fourth collaboration, WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER. There is no light in the room. A sun is outside, near … Read More

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Imperial State of Mind

“When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.”

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Peaches and Penumbras

Independent life and the lesson of Ginsberg.

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Fresh Reflects

“I never change; I’m too stuck in my ways.” There is a hope that we forget that “corrupt but necessary” college admissions process once in college. This, of course, is hypocritical and hopeless, for who hasn’t heard that kid boast … Read More

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Peer Review

Perfecting the college essay.

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The son poem begins:

‘ . . . And what greater calamity
[be]falls . . . than the loss of worship . . .
or , in the first eras , territory , river ,
and sure on that tongue . . . my elder-tongue . . .

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Writing the Reading

Sometimes, you forget: there are people out there who do absolutely brilliant, incredible things. Even at achievement-filled Princeton—especially at achievement-filled Princeton—greatness, which is a level below the place I write about, can become benign and unimpressive. Talent becomes the norm … Read More

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Brown Eyed Man

If you have never heard Van Morrison’s yearning, keening voice—its blues and jazzy swag , the way it stretches words into birds that fly you to heaven, its worn beauty—well, then, you’ve never heard it. But I bet you have; … Read More

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Erysipelas

A poem for your brambled mind.

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Sun-Dance

Pee-poem.

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The dead earth sighs,

Poem.

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WIll My Eyes Be Closed or Open?

Ordinary, suicidal thoughts in Emerson and Bjork’s “Hyperballad”.

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