Joseph Campana
This Living Hand
I’m thinking about hands, but Jasper Johns, not Frank O’Hara, is to blame. Earnest grasping. That was what John Keats imagined the warm, living hand capable of performing in his eerie and insistent late poem “This Living Hand.” This poem…
All I Ever Wanted To Be Was Frank O’Hara
I didn’t know enough, as a child, to want to be Frank O’Hara. Had I read those poems in my sleepy upstate New York hometown, I would have understood their urban electricity to be what was missing in life. When…
A Footnote on Moral Turpitude
As if the case of Sebastian Horsley couldn’t get stranger. A recent piece (dare we call it opinion or reporting?) in the New York Times (and no wonder they don’t have room for serious journalism or more literary reviews with…
Of Prostitution, Pens, Paranoia, and Pablum
Until perhaps a week ago I had never heard of Sebastian Horsley. It’s still not clear to me if this is my failing or Horsley’s. Perhaps reading of his “memoir” (a term that should always now appear in diacritical marks)…
The Unbearable Triteness of (not) Being (at AWP or the Superbowl)
February 2nd and 3rd may not ring in the ear like so many other notable dates: July 4th (or 14th if you’re French), December 7th, September 11th, etc. A few important things did happen on these days: the war between…
