Elinor Nauen

One winter I lived in the woods in Maine with 4 other people, in a one-room A-frame with a divided, doorless loft. One by one the others read Dune, by Frank Herbert, and one by one they went into a depression (not in the least exacerbated by the fact that we were  Read More 

* Loud sneezes. A family story is the time my folks went to the theater up in the Twin Cities. Just when the murderer was creeping up on his victim, my dad sneezed so loud that even the actor jumped. A few days later, back in Sioux Falls, a client said, Hans, the funniest thing—we went to a show in Minneapolis last weekend, & right at the climax, some guy sneezed, really loud. Do tell, my dad murmured.

* Anti–foot fetish. No pedicures, please.

* Fear of squirrels.

* Couch sleeping.  Read More 

Many years we go to my grandmother's in Virginia.
My mother, father, aunts and at least two of my brothers are there.
My son has a football game that morning.
My daughter is home, but needs to get back to school this weekend.
My wife doesn't want to ride for nine hours and turn right back.
Sometimes I have gone alone, but not often.
A couple of neighbors were vying for our company.
One of those my daughter’s boyfriend’s family,
Which we did last year and had fun.
But this year it will be another family,
One we have visited on two or three other Thanksgivings.
I have a turkey freezing in the garage.

Nothing to do with it.  Read More 

This was a Valentine's present many years ago. The art, not the guy, who showed up & never left. And likes Jim Dine.

I want to start taking photos of other visitors to my space. Today it was Becca (with Swiss chocolate), Bob (with beatnik tales) & Anselm (his own sweet self).

And I have a subconjunctival hemorrhage, a giant blood spot right in my eye (that's a photo you do not want to see).  Read More 

A skeleton walks into a bar.

The bartender says, Hey, buddy, what'll it be?

The skeleton says, Give me a beer... & a mop.

It was either this picture or one of the first Christmas tree of the year, which I saw last Thursday on the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn. I don't guess I have anything insightful to say about either one except that they're part of my world & my day & what I see when I'm out & about, or in & about.

I'm trying to decide whether to leave the t.p. as it is & buy a few new packs, or destroy the symmetry. In other words, is it an installation or a happening? Read More 

This is a 2009 glass mosaic in the Jay Street subway station called Departures & Arrivals, by Ben Snead. It depicts the borough's diversity in 6 species: tiger beetle (local but disappearing), European starling (England), house sparrow (Europe), red lion fish (Indian Ocean), monk parrot (S. America) and koi (Japan). We come & we go, & sometimes we end up in a place more to our liking.  Read More 

I'm really glad I went to BAM for Black Mountain Songs, featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Basil King (thanks, Martha!). Baz's down-to-earth honesty was a perfect counterpart to the young people's ethereal voices, singing works by Fielding Dawson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan an others, set to music for this event. I also loved hearing a clip of Charles Olson reading Maximus to Gloucester, in that pure midcentury Massachusetts accent.

What I didn't love was getting lost on the way there: what happened to Fulton Street? Dang, it was right there, if I'd simply looked down the block I would have seen the theater & not taken a giant detour. After the show, I went the wrong way for many blocks before I figured out that I should have gotten to the subway by now. Did I want to become a member of BAM? Thanks, but not until I can get there without getting lost.

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I wanted to walk by the winter ocean. Johnny agreed to go to Coney Island because it meant we weren't going to go away overnight, to Philly. He's a man who knows how to cut his losses. It was 20° yesterday so I gave in & we dashed up to TKTS & scored excellent half-price seats to  Read More 

I was walking down First Avenue the other day when a young man asked if I was familiar with the neighborhood. Well, I do live here. Do you know the blog EVGrieve? Of course! When he told me he's the person who does the "Out & About in the East Village" feature & could he interview me for it, I was so excited. I love that feature & have dreamed of being in it—basically, a hyperlocal Pulitzer Prize. (Click on the photo caption to read the whole piece.)

I only regret that I didn’t think to tell him about the time I told my cousin that I live in the best apartment in the building, & the best building in the neighborhood, & the best neighborhood in the city, & the best city in the world—& then it dawned on me: I LIVE IN THE BEST APARTMENT IN THE WORLD! And my cousin gently said, I'm not sure everyone would agree, El.

Update: Ah, fame. Somehow this post disappeared from my blog; I've restored it as best I recall.  Read More 

My home state turned 125 this month. When I was little, you still occasionally met someone who remembered the days when it was Dakota Territory.

Ask me anything. State bird? The ring-necked pheasant, an import from China that was introduced for hunting. My dad often took payment in trade, so we ate pheasant (& buckshot) pretty frequently.

State tree? The telephone pole. That's Read More 

Though we always say "the Mexicans'," it's really called Downtown Bakery & I eat there often enough that they know my voice on the phone & half the time they say "give me 10 minutes" before I even tell them what I want. (It's always a ranchero burrito or a torta de queso.) The food is made by several members of a big, close family. The best part, in a way, is how small & unappealing the place is from the outside—it keeps the crowds away. One of the places that reminds me that I really live here.  Read More 

A glow-in-the-dark bike path just opened in Nuenen, Netherlands, designed by an artist named Daan Roosegaarde as homage to Van Gogh's "Starry Night." (Roosegaarde's the one who called it techno poetry.) “By incorporating lighting into the bicycle path itself, additional street lighting is unnecessary,” reads a project description, which also assures us that the "bicycle path lighting is as subtle as possible to ensure minimal intrusion on the habitat of animals." Me, I'm a sucker for luminescent & fluorescent Read More 

Everything about Philae lander blows my mind: that it landed on a comet! That the moon is 1 light second from us & Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is 28 light minutes away. That it took 10 years to get to a comet more than 300 million miles from Earth. That scientists managed to figure out how to build something that could land on a tiny chunk of ice that far from here. How it sounds (click on the photo caption). That we can see a comet up close! Rosetta,  Read More 

I found a box of books, including a couple I looked everywhere for not long ago. Why were they shoved under a table & not displayed on a shelf? I have no idea! And as usual when I'm cleaning & tossing, I ask: Why was I keeping THAT? It's embarrassing what I seem to think I might just want or need in some unspecified future. And of course the longer you hang on to some stupid thing, the more it seems of important, historic &/or sentimental value.

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that you are constantly making exciting discoveries!--A.A. Milne Read More 

We've all absorbed Williams' examples so well that his "I do this, I do that" poems (except it's patients & Elsie & Kathleen & a Negro woman who do this or that) almost no longer demonstrate his startling freshness (although they do!). I remember an acquaintance, burning with indignation, saying "This Is Just to Say"—the famous "plums" poem—was "nothing but  Read More 

What we know of Paradise we learn here, by looking, by vision, by imagination, and both Paradise and the ground underfoot are always beyond the perfect grasp of our arts, as of our sciences. —Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

As with a poem, you can't summarize this book, but I think it fair to say it concerns itself with what Berry calls  Read More 

5. I Can’t Have Enough

the invisible elm
that’s impossible
to miss

a tall man & a short man
a woman in a gold dress & church hat
dogs – hipster glasses – dogs –

skinny well-dressed young folk – dogs

Dante’s Inferno & I miss Eileen –
wherever she is

that’s the center

might be roses, woodpeckers, pedophiles
what’s for dinner, billy boy?
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So I leaned on a shelf & it immediately split from the bookcase, not dumping everything & it probably would be fine indefinitely, but I decided to Fix It, so I dug under the tub for nails & a hammer, which led to me throwing away 2 full bags of paper bags (sacks) that were between me & the tools, taking all the books out of that bookcase, tossing 1 or 2, failing to hammer a nail (sheesh) & feeling inspired to clean, toss, discard, clean both home & office. Only 50-odd days left in 2014. Whatever else, I can go into 2015 with LESS. Read More 

Just when I thought I had the whole day to myself, first my email went wonkers & I took careless stabs at it wherever I could find a place so I messed it up more, & then suddenly it worked fine, better than ever. Then I hung out with some friends visiting. Then it got cold &  Read More 

Gonna start my tea, hang up my gi, read a little WC* ... no, that's not today's poem, just singin' on my way to my desk to say I saw a lady cardinal on the curb a few doors down; adding to the pleasure was pointing it out to a passerby, who mirrored my  Read More 

This year it stands for National Poetry Writing Month. I don't have a quick novel in me this year but I do have a poem a day, although Zacks says every day is PoWri day, yoyo. Yesterday I was rapturous at spotting a raptor (they have two foveas, that's why an eagle is "eagle-eyed")  Read More 

So great that the coffee shop was too crowded for 3 of us, so we walked a block or 2 to Union Square & sat outside on a 76° day. And far across the park, David said, Look, a raptor! And when it dropped near us he knew it was an osprey not a hawk. A good meeting AND I saw an osprey. A productive & pleasant morning.  Read More 

4. I Can’t Have Thoughts

I can only try to keep my loved ones alive
& sit outside on a summer bench
& be amazed at knowing so many people
with darkling eyes

The plane that didn’t crash & the one that did.

I know a lot of people who make a point of articulating things they are grateful for. I myself make a list every morning & it invariably improves my mood. It occurs to me that expressing our thanks should be part of that exercise.

I recently did favors for a couple of people, who both neglected  Read More