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It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that I love to read. My bedroom (and living room, and dining room table) are cluttered with "to be read" stacks, and, I mean, I named my *dog* Bridget Jones. After the book, of course (you'd be shocked at how many people ask).

Yeah, I love books.

I *also* love my new neighborhood.
I've been going on for ages now about how I've been moving downtown (and yes, I'm well aware that the process has taken at least six months). I think I've been moving one sock at a time, honestly. Because I am lazy. And busy. And addicted to reality television when I'm not writing. But here I am, now. Down on Leroy Street, in the heart of Greenwich VIllage.

If you've never been to NYC, I should explain: The Village is a charming little enclave all unto itself. Down here, the streets wind in and out as opposed to following "the grid," and many people live in lower brownstones or townhouses as opposed to towering skyscrapers. We've got amazing specialty restaurants and lots and lots of famous movies and tv shows have filmed on location down here.

Another thing we've got: a literary tradition.
Now that I'm moved in for reals, I've been working from the Hudson Park branch of the NYPL. It's not the biggest or brightest branch of the library, but it's two doors down from my house, with wireless internet and lots of space for me to spread out and space out over my work.

It was during just such a spaceing the other day that I saw it: a small bookshelf labeled: GREENWICH VILLAGE AUTHORS. And it must be said, though my own books were not on that shelf (I've only been a GVA for about two months now, ya know?), there are a lot of "us." We include: the Beat poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Allen Poe, and Henry James, just for starters. Oh, and for all you YA fans, even Louisa May Alcott.

Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, and Norman Mailer were devoted patrons of the White Horse Tavern (pic below), a watering hole that is these days more popular with tourists than would be scribes. But that's okay. I don't need the White Horse. I consider myself the *dark* horse as far as keeping up my end of my neighborhood's literary cred.

No, I may not have made my way to that very special bookshelf just yet...but I'm definitely getting closer. Both literally and figuratively.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a legacy to uphold.

The history of Monopoly.

Congratulations to Charles Simic, the new Poet Laureate.

A great look at The Book Depository.

Ozomatli as Cultural Ambassadors?  

Books, Inq, celebrates the anniversary of Wallace Steven’s death.

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Since leaving my home state, I've become something of a New Hampshire chauvinist. So it gives me great pleasure to see that the new U.S. poet laureate is Charles Simic, who has taught for many years at my own undergraduate alma mater, the University of New Hampshire (yes, I was at NYU longer, but UNH is the place that gave me a diploma, so I've got some loyalty to them). Last year, New Hampshire's Donald Hall was the poet laureate, and now it's Simic (who is, I must admit, a poet far closer to my tastes than Hall, but I have tremendous respect for Hall's work as an editor and promoter of poetry, and he's absolutely wonderful as a reader of his, or anybody's, work).

Selections of Simic's work are available online at the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation websites. I highly recommend his Selected Early Poems, the prose poems in The World Doesn't End, all of his essays and memoirs, and his book about our beloved Joseph Cornell, Dime-Store Alchemy.

It's only appropriate to end with a poem:

Fork
by Charles Simic

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.