Random Photos

A few from recent months, in and around NYC, Newark, and points north and south. Enjoy!

1 World Trade Center enshrouded in thick
gray clouds, beneath an otherwise cerulean sky

Barbara Epler, New Directions' Editor in Chief and
Publisher, and my editor, receiving the Friedrich
Ulfers Preis from the Goethe Institute in New York 

Part of the flyer for the 8th Annual
Festival Neue Literatur, whose theme
was "Queer as Volk" (March 3-5)

One of the conversations at Festival Neue Literatur
"Translation at the Margins" discussions,
featuring Mexican literary star Valeria Luiselli,
author John Freeman, and translator Tess Lewis

Resistance messages in the windows
of the Cooper Union's Great Hall

A strong wind that blew a trash can
off its moorings at the Exchange Place
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station

Someone crashed outside my office
at Rutgers-Newark (I never found
out if anyone was hurt, though I hope not) 

Rutgers-Newark MFA Director Jayne Anne Phillips
with Writers@Newark series guests and
my former colleagues Robyn Schiff and Eula Biss 

Subway boxing match--it was choreographed,
thankfully, and not a real fight

Floor merchant, MTA station

Erecting the outdoor Spring Market
at Bryant Park, NYC

The elevated floor for the Spring Market
in Bryant Park 

A lively restaurant in Brooklyn

Erica Hunt and Tonya Foster reading
and conversing about all kinds of fascinating things
at Adam Fitzgerald's East Village apartment 

A group of Rice University students who came
to Newark via the Friends Service, and whom
I met with at the Newark Museum

Downtown Providence, Rhode Island 

During the northeastern blizzard, which
hit while I was visiting at Brown this spring 

The 2017 Spring semester readers, Brown
Department of Literary Arts

On Carole Maso's door at Brown,
two departed but never forgotten literary
forces, C.D. Wright and Aishah Rahman

The Turkish contract for Counternarratives,
which apparently vanished in the mail
on its way to the publisher's agents there
(perhaps one of Erdogan's reps read "The Lions"....)

Graffiti in Providence 

Plein air painter, Astor Place 

Something about his hat made
me photograph him 

Manhattan, still too cold
for outdoor dining 

One of those incredibly filthy
New York City snow mountains 

"Can't Sleep?" 

A sculpture rising in Cooper Square

Before my event with Phil Harper and
Sonya Posmentier, at NYU Center
for the Humanities

A little lost finger penguin 

Only in NYC (Bryant Park)

Daffodils peeping through the mulch,
Bryant Park (42nd Street just beyond the gate)

Meatpacking District, Manhattan 

The line outside the Whitney Museum to
see the 2017 Biennial (Frieda Kahlo
is looking askance at everyone) 

The image speaks for itself

Ernest Montgomery's newest volume
of photos (i.e., Beauty), Hermoso 

Tomorrow: Nothing Personal: The Dark Room Collection @ Poets House

Coming up tomorrow!

In the Garden

For some reason I seem to recall hitting the garden much earlier in prior springs, but between work and the weather, it was not until this weekend that we were able to put plants into the ground.

As in previous years, we planted herbs and vegetables in the back, but no flowers this time. (C found places for new rose bushes in the front.) Between natural die-offs, the hurricane last fall, the long chilly (but not freezing) winter, and the slow-arriving spring, some of the backyard's longstanding perennial herbs didn't make it, but the African sage, the lavender (which for years we could not induce to grow, until we added lime to the soil), and the rosemary are thriving. We never planted comfrey, but its purple spears have formed a little forest beneath the lilac bush, which is now in bloom. The blackberry bush, severely cut back, also looks set both to flower and bear fruit. Among the flowers, the rose bushes, a single hyacinth, and the rhododendron bush, and the honeysuckle are also doing well.

Towering over everything is the river magnolia, with its full, healthy glossy, white-pink leaves, which are shedding, forming a carpet over everything, which I hope will have been completely laid by the end of the week so that we can rake it up and attend to the rest of the backyard. That should also give both us time to recover from the workout the gardening bestowed upon us. I am praying I'll be able to move my arms and legs tomorrow.

A few photos of the new plantings, which are mostly fruits vegetables we've had success growing in the past (broccoli, eggplant, basil) and some we've never been able to grow before (sweet peas, jalapeño peppers). We tried a new method our neighbor recommended to prevent weeds. Alongside the transfers we placed a lining of newspaper, which we covered with topsoil. Supposedly the paper admits the plant's roots but does not allow weeds (evening nightshade behind a perennial visitor along the fences) to bore through. I will try to add updates throughout the rest of the spring and summer.

The ever-hardy African sage, which I had to cut back.

Sweet peas, onions (there were wild onions
dotting the soil), broccoli, eggplant, cucumbers,
and hot peppers

A bigger patch: tomatoes (6 different types), basil and
lemon basil, jalapeño peppers, cilantro

The same patch from a different perspective

The strawberry patch, which was full of new shoots,
with oregano, cilantro to the left, and cucumbers
(rosemary is the far right)

The river magnolia, in bloom
(the butterfly bush is on the left,
a fir tree stands in the right distance)

Another patch where we used to have lemon balm
and lots of other herbs, but nothing survived, so we
went with 3 types of stone crop (on the right)
and sweet marjoram on the left. We later added
a row of spearmint and peppermint behind these.

Photos: Blossoms

I never tire of the many signs of spring. In Chicago before I left, the weather had already shifted to summer-mode. (It might be much milder now that I'm away. Summer is my favorite season, but I love spring's heralds and harbingers.) In New Jersey and New York, however, it does still feel like (a slightly warmer) March. I've even gotten to experience one of my favorite weather events, fog, which unfurled itself over everything like a gauzy coverlet all the way down to the Hudson. As I've traipsed hither and thither, I've been snapping photographs of flowers in bloom. Here are a few. I'm no Ansel Adams, but I think these images should convey some sense of the beautiful that nature makes available to us if we look.