Remembering A Friend Reading Kafka, And Other Latest Things

Just on the edge of fall, a few last things blossoming: An essay remembering a gone friend reading Kafka is online at West Branch, along with an obliquely related poem. (Thanks goes out to Justin Boening for asking me to contribute to the heart-wrenching feature.) Just a few weeks back, I was wandering around Prague trying to recall Kafka and an era I never lived. Roberto and I also relived moments, so it felt, of Kundera novels there.

Also recently had a poem in Wreck Park. Thanks, Brian Trimboli.

A brief stint back in New York after Prague and Berlin, and then went back over the ocean, where I worked from a balcony for a week; here are some choice animal-related articles I especially remember: here, here, and here.

Continuing to think through all the moral ambiguities and complexities of portraying in words and images a variety of animal issues and animal protagonists. Reading (slowly) Dependent Rational Animals and The Animal That Therefore I Am is helping this thinking tremendously.

A few days back in New York and I was helping launch the new beautiful issue of Parallax, at Shoestring Press in Brooklyn. I collaborated with my very own mamma for the artwork.

Hoping that everyone had as full and beautiful a summer, as the earth shifts toward colder weather.

Stay tuned for a poem coming out in Tin House soon ... and more slightly awkward, overly personal updates like these, trying to keep track of what's happening with poetry, philosophy, and animals in my life, in a way that's pretending to be comfortable with the social media, digital era.