I found this yesterday in, I’m guessing, the book that I bought there in the spring of 2001.

A little research shows it closed some time after it moved from Montague St in Brooklyn Heights to Smith St in Brooklyn.

(Original series here, with subsequent discoveries here.)

Last, next.

78: Nat’l Parks (Great Smoky Mtns)
79: 50 (Grass Stain)

This morning, I went inside a bookstore for the first time since January 2020. I picked up part of an online order, I browsed, and I bought a few more books. It was almost normal.

And, of course, I grabbed a pinch of bookmarks.

(Original series here, with subsequent discoveries here.)

Last, next.

77: United States of Letterpress (Erin Beckloff)
78: Nat’l Parks (Great Smoky Mtns)

🔗 Building Ages in NL “A Dutch data engineer wanted to find out the age of the building his son lives in and ended up creating a map, visualising the age of all of the Netherlands’ 10 million or so buildings.” (via)

I was able to determine that my father was born in a house built in 1905.

1977:

2018:

Laurie Anderson, Norton Lecture: Spending the War Without You:

I have to tell you: in these lectures, I’m not going to be explaining my work or describing who I am as an artist. In fact, I don’t care if you know who I am.

I’ve never really tried to express myself through my work. It’s more about curiosity, about how things are, what they are.

Plus, I’ve really made an effort for most of my life to just get rid of the idea of being anyone at all.

(From Pt 1: The River @ ±7 minutes 20–50 seconds)

Last, next.

76: Kraft (graph)
77: United States of Letterpress (Erin Beckloff)

Variations on the 10-Minute Spill

In the months since writing my response to this interview question, I’ve seen several references to extremely similar writing prompts — a typically synchronistic example of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

In the Kenyon Review (from 3/2021), Michael Montlack speaks of Dorianne Laux & Joe Millar’s method of “making a list of words, throwing in a quote or fact or phrase, and taking an hour to write a draft.” [2025-03-02: the link is dead]

And in the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter (from 10/2020), Valerie Coulton describes Edward Smallfield’s process that “consists of a personalized postcard with four words and a quote. He used to pass these out in workshops, and then everyone would write for 15 minutes.”

I’m not surprised to see randomness and chance being integrated into writing prompts, but now I’m curious to find out what the provenance is for Rita Dove’s exercise, which I’ve been using on and off for about twenty years.

Here is the last part of my poetry mini interview.

It’s the shocking season finale! To save our gang’s favorite hang-out from foreclosure, I must perform a thrilling leap on water skis over a shark tank. And in the audio commentary, I talk about what I’m currently working on.

The fourth part in my poetry mini interview is up.

In this week’s musical episode, Hal Holbrook — fresh off his Tony award-winning run as the Mysterious Stranger — joins the cast to sing about adjectives. Performed and broadcast live before a studio audience!