My mother read to me from the time I could turn over from my back to my belly. Soon as I could walk, she began taking me to the little library on Central Street, and soon enough I’d run through all the wonderful books for kids the librarians knew of and could afford to buy. […]
Thorne Smith and My Mother’s Quarter Read More »
I’d learned a lot of blues songs, quite a few famous and obscure standards from the 20s and 30s, some Irish tunes, a few old Burl Ives songs and others from the dread folk music revival years, a few Dylan tunes. (While I’d dug Dylan’s early lp’s, he was leaving me pretty lukewarm as
Zimmerman’s Syndrome Read More »
I grew up in 1950s Evanston, just north of Chicago, in a suburb even more rigorously segregated than the big town to the south. Evanston’s only high school stood at one end of the black “ghetto” (hardly an accurate monicker, since Evanston’s black population was mainly middle class). Until I went to high school, I
I hate writing for the universe. It’s like dancing in front of a jeering crowd, painfully aware of yourself. You feel caged in your own body with every thought from the audience jabbing your heart as you move. Yet unlike dancing, writers can’t avoid the audience. They are haunted by them in every word they
Writing for the Universe Read More »
When I consider how my life is scent What would I do if suddenly my nose One day became as moribund as those Of humans, who, if they could but be leant The merest hint of all my nostrils know Would fall, astounded, to the ground made
Sonnet 19: Zigmund Milton Steiner Read More »
Last summer, I received a letter from the Miss Teen Beauty Pageant. The letter informed me that I was recommended for the pageant by someone anonymous. When I first received it, I threw it aside and didn’t look at it for a few days. I wasn’t interested in being in a beauty pageant. Still, the