HISTORY

 
A photo of me I've never seen before, sent to me from longtime friend Dick Patterson, taken around 1970 [May 1971 turns out] when I was teaching at Trinity College in DC before I "came out" and lost that gig.

BACK WHEN

 
Saw this photo for the first time only a few days ago. It's me and longtime dear friend, the great writer and always glamorous Nana-Ama Danquah in LA around 1989. I no longer have that shirt but still remember how soft it was. Throughout my life, post the jazz musician years, I wore what others gifted me or what I bought from thrift stores. A few times I bought something new and always because I felt it in a store and it was too soft to resist.

GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA R.I.P.

 
In the 1950s when I went from boy to young man I had crushes on a lot of movie stars and three European ones in particular: Bridget Bardot, Simone Signoret, and Gina Lollobrigida. Signoret remains one of my favorite movie actresses. Bardot became a problematic personality. But Lollobrigida, who resembled my Italian-American sister-in-law (I was the ring-bearer at her wedding to one of my brother's in 1949) is the only one I got to meet. 

My soon-to-be second wife, Penny, and Gina were celebrity guests at some event (was it at Bloomingdales?) in 1982 which she took me and my kids to (I was a single parent) and I got to meet Gina, who turned out to be gracious, unpretentious, smart, and funny. I was thrilled, and still am. R.I.P.

MY MLK SONNET

When Martin Luther King is shot I feel the

sudden shift in the atmosphere, like trying to

breathe underwater. It's been three years since

Malcom X’s assassination and my new radical

friends and reading have opened my eyes to the

realities of class in the USA. Malcolm verbally

attacked white folks with impunity, but the

minute he decided it was not about race but

about the poor and the wealthy, BAM! King

spends years fighting racism and despite attempts

on his life and tons of threats seemed invulner-

able, but as soon as he organizes a poor people’s

campaign talking about the haves and have-nots,

BAM! I wonder if the Marxists have it right.

(C) 1968, 2023

2023 GOLDEN GLOBES

Seemed more diverse and more LGBTQ+, thankfully, and definitely more diverse fashion-wise, loved a lot of the gowns for their unique styles, highlights for me were Michelle Yeoh's and Jennifer Coolidge's acceptance speeches (among several memorable ones), but disappointed EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE didn't win best movie, BANSHEES OF INISHERIN is perfectly shot, edited, directed, and acted but the story is too deliberately contrived for unmerited idiocy that it left me totally dissatisfied as opposed to EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (or my other top faves: THANK YOU VERY MUCH LEO GRANDE and WOMAN KING). My two cents.

RUSSELL BANKS & CHARLES SIMIC R.I.P.

 

I knew Russell Banks and Charles Simic in the 1960s and early '70s. We were all little magazine and small press poets and writers and Russell had yet to have a book out when we met. I was on literary and small press writers panels with each of them back then and ran into them at conferences and readings. I liked them both and appreciated their writing but found them more guarded in their reactions to my no-filter revelations and rants. They were good friends to each other and it seems appropriate that they died within days of each other. Rest In Poetry and Prose and condolences to your families, friends, and fans.