John Latta
@lattaj.bsky.social
Poet, birder. Used to bloviate at Isola di Rifiuti.
once under the title “Poem,” once as epigraph to a 1953 poem called “Two Variations” (canceled earlier title = “To Edwin”). The tangible, the now, presence. Some O’Hara lines I’ve long loved—out of the poem beginning “Light clarity avocado salad in the morning”—suddenly seem to be about
November 30, 2025 at 1:27 AM
once under the title “Poem,” once as epigraph to a 1953 poem called “Two Variations” (canceled earlier title = “To Edwin”). The tangible, the now, presence. Some O’Hara lines I’ve long loved—out of the poem beginning “Light clarity avocado salad in the morning”—suddenly seem to be about
Frank O’Hara, out of an entry in an ephemeral journal (in the Donald Allen-edited Early Writing (Grey Fox, 1977)). In the previous day’s entry, O’Hara writes of “the direct apprehension of the thing itself”—a striving for presence likely to be thwarted precisely by “style.” Or by “idea.” (See WCW.)
November 30, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Frank O’Hara, out of an entry in an ephemeral journal (in the Donald Allen-edited Early Writing (Grey Fox, 1977)). In the previous day’s entry, O’Hara writes of “the direct apprehension of the thing itself”—a striving for presence likely to be thwarted precisely by “style.” Or by “idea.” (See WCW.)
A cold lazy afternoon of mostly aimless and desultory reading brings me somehow to Tom Clark’s early book Stones (1969), and a quiet poem one used to recite late in bars (along with, louder, with ready irony, John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14“ (“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. . . .”)):
November 27, 2025 at 8:28 PM
A cold lazy afternoon of mostly aimless and desultory reading brings me somehow to Tom Clark’s early book Stones (1969), and a quiet poem one used to recite late in bars (along with, louder, with ready irony, John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14“ (“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. . . .”)):
A lovely (and funny) anecdote out of Ronald Johnson’s 1976 Vort interview, conducted by Barry Alpert (reprinted in _Ronald Johnson: Life and Works_ (National Poetry Foundation, 2008)). I would love to read a collection of the letters exchanged between Ian Hamilton Finlay and Johnson.
November 26, 2025 at 1:53 PM
A lovely (and funny) anecdote out of Ronald Johnson’s 1976 Vort interview, conducted by Barry Alpert (reprinted in _Ronald Johnson: Life and Works_ (National Poetry Foundation, 2008)). I would love to read a collection of the letters exchanged between Ian Hamilton Finlay and Johnson.
Nigh-random core sample out of Eliot Weinberger’s longish poem “The Ceaseless Murmuring of Innumerable Bees” (in the Spring 2024 issue of the Paris Review). A lengthy interview with Weinberger, conducted by Srikanth Reddy (in “The Art of the Essay” series), is found in the Fall 2025 issue.
November 25, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Nigh-random core sample out of Eliot Weinberger’s longish poem “The Ceaseless Murmuring of Innumerable Bees” (in the Spring 2024 issue of the Paris Review). A lengthy interview with Weinberger, conducted by Srikanth Reddy (in “The Art of the Essay” series), is found in the Fall 2025 issue.
Another sharp percept of poetry’s high processual work (“words in a cranial theater”!) and slow-arriving “get”—out of Merrill Gilfillan’s _Old River New River: A Miscellany_ (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019):
November 24, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Another sharp percept of poetry’s high processual work (“words in a cranial theater”!) and slow-arriving “get”—out of Merrill Gilfillan’s _Old River New River: A Miscellany_ (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019):
Oh yeah. And Gilfillan’s plein air writing’s likely got strong roots in Kerouac’s sketching (“everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words”). Out of Kerouac’s 18 May 1952 letter to Ginsberg:
November 21, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Oh yeah. And Gilfillan’s plein air writing’s likely got strong roots in Kerouac’s sketching (“everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words”). Out of Kerouac’s 18 May 1952 letter to Ginsberg:
Which may assay a slightly different matter, that of writing in (or out of) a landscape (in a lovely phrase, “the art of simply Going-out-to-see”). Here a quartet of brief quotes (out of _Old River New River: A Miscellany_ (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019)):
November 21, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Which may assay a slightly different matter, that of writing in (or out of) a landscape (in a lovely phrase, “the art of simply Going-out-to-see”). Here a quartet of brief quotes (out of _Old River New River: A Miscellany_ (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019)):
The fictioneer / fabulist Eugene K. Garber, a lovely, funny man and a terrific teacher.
November 20, 2025 at 12:26 AM
The fictioneer / fabulist Eugene K. Garber, a lovely, funny man and a terrific teacher.
And a tiny photograph labeled “Self Portrait on the Surface of the Water Lily Pond, Giverny” (c. 1905), “believed to have been taken by Monet . . . gazing down into the water from the Japanese bridge,” and capturing his own straw-hatted shadow. (Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.)
November 15, 2025 at 12:21 PM
And a tiny photograph labeled “Self Portrait on the Surface of the Water Lily Pond, Giverny” (c. 1905), “believed to have been taken by Monet . . . gazing down into the water from the Japanese bridge,” and capturing his own straw-hatted shadow. (Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.)
A deftly-limned John Singer Sargent watercolor sketch titled “Santa Maria della Salute” (c. 1904-9). I love its evident ferocious speed, and its scratched-off paint.
November 15, 2025 at 12:21 PM
A deftly-limned John Singer Sargent watercolor sketch titled “Santa Maria della Salute” (c. 1904-9). I love its evident ferocious speed, and its scratched-off paint.
Two photographs by Graciela Iturbide, out of a tremendous exhibit at the International Center of Photography, in New York City. “El señor de los pájaros, Nayarit, México,” 1985 and “Ritual, Benarés, India,” 1998.
November 8, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Two photographs by Graciela Iturbide, out of a tremendous exhibit at the International Center of Photography, in New York City. “El señor de los pájaros, Nayarit, México,” 1985 and “Ritual, Benarés, India,” 1998.
Thursday in New York City:
November 3, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Thursday in New York City:
A new month. Somebody needs to put it up here—John Ashbery, out of The Double Dream of Spring (1970):
November 1, 2025 at 5:30 PM
A new month. Somebody needs to put it up here—John Ashbery, out of The Double Dream of Spring (1970):
Rosalie Moore’s book in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, selected by W. H. Auden, The Grasshopper’s Man and Other Poems, was published in 1949, seven years before Ashbery’s Some Trees. One poem’s dedicatory “for G. M. Hopkins” provides a sign of plausible lineage, seen though, only in the rhythms.
November 1, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Rosalie Moore’s book in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, selected by W. H. Auden, The Grasshopper’s Man and Other Poems, was published in 1949, seven years before Ashbery’s Some Trees. One poem’s dedicatory “for G. M. Hopkins” provides a sign of plausible lineage, seen though, only in the rhythms.
Stray remark c. 1948 by William Carlos Williams: “It is shocking for the uninformed to look at a Picasso or to pick up a poem by Rosalie Moore. He can’t understand them.” Struck by that seemingly provocative equation (Picasso = Moore) since I didn’t recall ever hearing of the latter. So, two poems:
November 1, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Stray remark c. 1948 by William Carlos Williams: “It is shocking for the uninformed to look at a Picasso or to pick up a poem by Rosalie Moore. He can’t understand them.” Struck by that seemingly provocative equation (Picasso = Moore) since I didn’t recall ever hearing of the latter. So, two poems:
I keep thinking about these lines toward the end of Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, a lengthy and affectionate look at the Statue of Liberty, both elegiac and rather fierce (“a masked woman draped in military gear . . . suited to action in the field”), and wholly without irony or cynicism.
October 31, 2025 at 3:17 PM
I keep thinking about these lines toward the end of Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, a lengthy and affectionate look at the Statue of Liberty, both elegiac and rather fierce (“a masked woman draped in military gear . . . suited to action in the field”), and wholly without irony or cynicism.
Sort of reminds me of Samuel Palmer’s work. (And, somewhat less, of Charles Burchfield’s.) What makes something appear ”visionary”? I don’t know.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), ”In a Shoreham Garden,” c. 1830, watercolor.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), ”In a Shoreham Garden,” c. 1830, watercolor.
October 30, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Sort of reminds me of Samuel Palmer’s work. (And, somewhat less, of Charles Burchfield’s.) What makes something appear ”visionary”? I don’t know.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), ”In a Shoreham Garden,” c. 1830, watercolor.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), ”In a Shoreham Garden,” c. 1830, watercolor.
Out of Susan Howe’s _Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives_ (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2014), a tiny book with, curiously, a wrongly-placed, or -selected or -transcribed “penciled text fragment” of Emily Dickinson’s (see p. 57 and pertinent endnote):
October 29, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Out of Susan Howe’s _Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives_ (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2014), a tiny book with, curiously, a wrongly-placed, or -selected or -transcribed “penciled text fragment” of Emily Dickinson’s (see p. 57 and pertinent endnote):
Out of a somewhat fugitive magazine called Luigi Ten Co, edited by Whit Griffin and Michael Klausman, two early poems by Ronald Johnson, “sent [by the twenty-four year old] to Louis Zukofsky in early 1959 to which he generously responded with commentary and encouragement.” Uncollected in the works?
October 27, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Out of a somewhat fugitive magazine called Luigi Ten Co, edited by Whit Griffin and Michael Klausman, two early poems by Ronald Johnson, “sent [by the twenty-four year old] to Louis Zukofsky in early 1959 to which he generously responded with commentary and encouragement.” Uncollected in the works?
Out to West Lake in the 33° F morning: grass frost-spiked, thin fog bunched up in the low spots. A fox sparrow’s meager half-song, like a boy learning how to whistle. Two new beaver-downed trees near the small pond. There, too, a merlin strafing a tiny assembly of green-winged teal, without success.
October 26, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Out to West Lake in the 33° F morning: grass frost-spiked, thin fog bunched up in the low spots. A fox sparrow’s meager half-song, like a boy learning how to whistle. Two new beaver-downed trees near the small pond. There, too, a merlin strafing a tiny assembly of green-winged teal, without success.
And Catullus, translated into Polari by Jennifer Ingleheart. “A secret language used by gay men, which flourished in London in the first seventy years of the [20th c.]. It drew on Cockney rhyming slang as well as Parlyaree, spoken primarily by theatrical types, prostitutes, tramps, and criminals.”
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
And Catullus, translated into Polari by Jennifer Ingleheart. “A secret language used by gay men, which flourished in London in the first seventy years of the [20th c.]. It drew on Cockney rhyming slang as well as Parlyaree, spoken primarily by theatrical types, prostitutes, tramps, and criminals.”
Also in the issue: Penelope Shuttle, John Goodby, Peter Robinson, Peter Larkin, Aidan Semmens, Iain MacLeod, Dmitry Blizniuk (translated by Yana Kane), and Vicente Huidobro (translated by Tony Frazer), among others. Below: two psalms, winsome, compelling, by Alan Baker, out of “A Book of Psalms.”
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Also in the issue: Penelope Shuttle, John Goodby, Peter Robinson, Peter Larkin, Aidan Semmens, Iain MacLeod, Dmitry Blizniuk (translated by Yana Kane), and Vicente Huidobro (translated by Tony Frazer), among others. Below: two psalms, winsome, compelling, by Alan Baker, out of “A Book of Psalms.”
Newish work in the new Shearsman (145 & 146), thanks to Kelvin Corcoran and Tony Frazer. Here’re a few opening entries out of “July Notes,” out of a manuscript called—after (no kiddin’) Dickens—“Notes for General Circulation.”
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Newish work in the new Shearsman (145 & 146), thanks to Kelvin Corcoran and Tony Frazer. Here’re a few opening entries out of “July Notes,” out of a manuscript called—after (no kiddin’) Dickens—“Notes for General Circulation.”
Decided to add these two, out of the “Poems from _Translation_” section of North’s book. (_Translation_ being a 2014 limited edition chapbook published by dynamos at The Song Cave.) Facing pages, English to English, a brilliant concept executed with pizzazz and élan.
October 21, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Decided to add these two, out of the “Poems from _Translation_” section of North’s book. (_Translation_ being a 2014 limited edition chapbook published by dynamos at The Song Cave.) Facing pages, English to English, a brilliant concept executed with pizzazz and élan.