Tag: david lehman

#Weeknotes S02 E24

Back on my bullshit. At least, a little bit. This past week, I just refused to let the details of my life slip by. But I did it the only way I can manage right now: Twitter. Maybe it’s cheating; I don’t much care.

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Luckily I managed a bit of writing and quite a bit of reading this week. I’ll talk about that in a bit. Otherwise, this might’ve gotten to me even more than it did.
https://twitter.com/DonP/status/1271529518814113797?s=20

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Granted, I am starting to make trips out for routine medical issues now that places have opened up. Still though, the pictures of crowds at bars and restaurants don’t freak me out nearly as much as the blissful ignorance on people’s faces. Which made me ask myself…

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The scope creep continues!
https://twitter.com/DonP/status/1271822998132178945?s=19

The mixer just wasn’t enough for me, so I ordered a ring light which I know is the right thing to do if I want the quality of my dayjob video calls to improve. But why? Why do I want to improve when so many other people — and this is NOT a criticism — seem happy with what they have? When it ultimately doesn’t affect the quality of my work, just the quality of my presentation? Eh, why not?

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It’s been a binging week…

  • Binge Watching: #BLACKAF — fuck this is a good show!
  • Binge Reading Beth Ann Fennelly’s micro memoir collection HEATING & COOLING
  • Also, David Lehman’s ONE HUNDRED AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
  • Also, Osama Alomar’s THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES

I’ve decided microfiction/micrononfiction is all my brain can make literary space for right now. And it’s where my writing’s been for the past couple of weeks.

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+++

That’s about it for this week. That actually felt like a lot of work given my quarantine/world-on-fire fugue I’m in (that most people I know are in). I might fall off the wagon for next week but you know what — fuck it. Props to my therapist for that one! So until next time, kids…

  • Black Lives Matter.
  • Stay home, or at least wear a fucking mask.

David Lehman Reading

Went to a reading at the local indie bookstore Thursday night by poet, writer, and critic David Lehman, whose work I knew mainly through a couple of poetry anthologies. GREAT AMERICAN PROSE POEMS is a book I return to regularly every year or so. But I couldn’t find my copy for him to sign (waaah!).

I’d only heard about the event on Monday, which was shock number one. Shock number two was that I never knew he had an Ithaca connection. Shock number three was his new book ONE HUNDRED AUTOBIOGRAPHIES which, as you can probably glean of the types of things I like reading, is right up my alley. I picked up the ebook and read what I could before Thursday night.

The book is made up of writing he did as he underwent cancer treatment. In this way, its form reminds me of Harvey Pekar’s OUR CANCER YEAR. Interestingly, Pekar’s wife Joyce Brabner was a collaborator, much as Lehman’s partner Stacey Lehman-Harwood was with AUTOBIOGRAPHIES. I was only to about the 12th or 13th section by the reading, but I got a kick out of hearing a legend read out loud what I’d just read a few nights before.