Rarely in my reading life, a book makes itself brilliant in the last pages. James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room works that way. It dazzles in...

The professor teaching the modern American novel that summer wore white polyester trousers so we could see his colored briefs. He went...

Karen Craigo was the poetry editor at a couple of journals where my poems have appeared, and we communicate via Facebook but have never...

Someone is always leaving By exile, death or heartbreak. Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you...

I can still hear her [Annie Dillard] say it: Put all your deaths, accidents, and diseases up front, at the beginning. Where possible. –...

24. Umbrella in the Cafe Do you ever think of yourself, late to your meeting or peed your pants some or sent the private e-mail to the...

Synchronistically this morning, two books are in conversation with each other and with our strange times. Or our ordinary ones. I'm not...

Today I finished reading The Complete First Edition: The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated and edited by Jack...

By James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian...

Book: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker Baker walks the water's edge near his home on the east coast of England and watches the birds, keeping...

Thank you for finding your way to my idiosyncratic, unplanned, and spontaneous reading blog. Each post will take you about 3 minutes to...