Letter 16: Could 11, 2022

I’ve been slightly disenchanted with the notion of the Letters from the Desk collection recently. I simply need to hunker down and full unfinished essays on artwork and books which have taken a lot of my psychological area in latest weeks. I may simply wax poetic on any topic, making it appear to be extra vital than it’s, when in truth all of the issues I’m serious about are of equal worth. They’re all worthy of prolonged critique. There’s a slightly in depth record in my thoughts that’s shifting round and making unusual noises. Suffice to say that I’m at present partaking not solely with particular artworks and particular literary accomplishments, however I’m additionally confronting the bigger points with which they’re involved. My subsequent contribution can be on Eve Packer’s 2021 quantity of poems and ideas titled “No Masks No Speak: Corona Poems 2020-2021” (Autonomedia Books) and to some extent, it would additionally signify my first concerted effort to grapple with the existential difficulties we’re all dealing with within the wake of how Covid has partially cancelled our on a regular basis lives, putting us in a state of emotional stasis, and forcing us to reestablish what offers life its worth. Who higher in some methods to talk to those difficulties than a poet who’s a additionally native New Yorker, devoted and steadfast, tethered tightly to the lifetime of the town that makes dwelling right here distinctive?

Search for it.