The Holy Colors: a Preface to “The Three Sunrises”

A few years ago, at a reading at the Soda Bar, on Vanderbilt Avenue, in Brooklyn, the writer Paula Bomer said something that has remained in my memory, though I can’t remember all of the details of what she said, or what led her to say it. Someone in the audience had asked her a question about her writing, and, in answering the question by way of digression, she’d begun to talk about the musician Jack White – and about […]

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Instead of Fires: A Preface to “Figures for an Apocalypse”

  There’s a movie about a man who wakes one morning alone in bed, in a house in a suburb, in an unnamed city. He goes downstairs, eats toast, drinks coffee. He is getting ready for his day the way he always does. But something is wrong. The world is too quiet. When he turns on the radio, no voices or sounds are heard. The man looks out the window. The camera lets us study his face. He seems intelligent, […]

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