Letter 16: Might 11, 2022

I’ve been quite disenchanted with the notion of the Letters from the Desk sequence 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 might simply wax poetic on any topic, making it appear to be extra necessary than it’s, when actually all of the issues I’m eager about are of equal worth. They’re all worthy of prolonged critique. There’s a quite in depth record in my thoughts that’s shifting round and making unusual noises. Suffice to say that I’m at the moment partaking not solely with particular artistic endeavors 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 Discuss: Corona Poems 2020-2021” (Autonomedia Books) and to a point, it should 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 provides 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 town that makes residing right here distinctive?

Search for it.