The Castle Where the Glaciers Remember In the wind-scraped extremities of northern Scotland, where the Sea of the Hebrides claws at mossy rock like some ancient penitent, stands Kilchurn Castle—what remains of it, at least. Stark and crumbled on a small rocky peninsula at the northeastern tip of Loch Awe, Kilchurn is a singular vestige…
Weblog
The Embroiderer of Incompleted Maps: The Oblique Cosmos of Gustaf Sobin
The Embroiderer of Incompleted Maps: The Oblique Cosmos of Gustaf Sobin Born in 1935 in the American southwest and having spent the majority of his adult life abroad in France, Gustaf Sobin remains one of the more esoteric yet resonant voices in late 20th-century poetry. Inhabiting a terrain midway between mystic architecture and the lexicon…
Halvfull sol fins ikke – dikt fra min første norske diktsamling
Halvfull sol fins ikke Snakk heller om et tynt solglimt,når vinterens sommerfuglmåne bøyer segmot verdener som skuer inn i deg. I kveldskimen gløder sommerfuglro;men hun sover i sitrende rosa roog trår på skrå i villspor mot avgrunnen,båret av tillitslys. Lampens fruktfra en ferd mot opphavetgryr, ja –når hun forelsker seg i klippen,først da kan lyset…
The Fog-Lit Edge: The Life and Symbolics of Lionel Ziprin
The Fog-Lit Edge: The Life and Symbolics of Lionel Ziprin Lionel Ziprin (1924–2009) remains an enigmatic figure in American poetry—a shadowy presence in the post-Beat constellation who sublimated public recognition for a deeply personal mysticism. Born into a Lower East Side Jewish family in New York City, Ziprin drew from the deep well of his…
The Castle That Believed It Was a Fortress
The Castle That Mistook Itself for a Fortress Perched upon a hill above the tranquil town of Český Krumlov in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic lies a structure of such theatrical grandeur that it is as much Renaissance opera as it is military bastion. The Český Krumlov Castle, founded in the 13th…
Dead Leaves in Rain: The Uncanny Testimonies of Jean Paulhan
Dead Leaves in Rain: The Uncanny Testimonies of Jean Paulhan Jean Paulhan, born in 1884 in Nîmes, France, cultivated a literary life that remains curiously marginal in the English-speaking world, though central to the French avant-garde and the philosophical exegesis of language and power. A literary critic, editor, resistance fighter, and quiet kingmaker of letters,…
Alexei Parshchik: The Burning, Silent Cartographer of Time
Alexei Parshchik: The Burning, Silent Cartographer of Time Born on an overcast October morning in the Volga basin in 1932, Alexei Parshchik entered a world already trembling on the cusp of steel. The son of an arithmetician and a librarian—a dual heritage of precision and lyricism—Parshchik’s early years were marked by a spiritual hunger that…
Harold Norse and the Alchemy of Outsiderhood
Harold Norse and the Alchemy of Outsiderhood Born in Brooklyn in 1916, Harold Norse emerged as one of the truly unclassifiable voices of 20th-century American poetry. Though often associated with the Beat movement and the post-war poetic avant-garde, Norse defied alignment with any particular canon or clique. His work fuses surrealism, Whitmanesque eroticism, proletarian directness,…
The Fortress That Dreamed of Quiet
The Castle That Dreamed of Silence High atop the stony ridges of the Carpathian Mountains, commanding a sheer drop into the valley of the Argeș River in what is now southern Romania, stands the brooding fortress of Poenari Castle—a ruin as overlooked by tourists as it was once feared by invaders. Built not for the…
Exhaustion as Illumination: The Inner Labyrinths of Gustaf Sobin
Exhaustion as Illumination: The Inner Labyrinths of Gustaf Sobin In the parched corridors of late-20th-century experimental poetics, Gustaf Sobin (1935–2005) moves like a phosphorescent shadow — delicate, vital, and ultimately elusive. Born in Boston and educated at Brown University, Sobin took an early leave from his American origins and expatriated himself to the village of…
Reveries of Dusk: The Forgotten Cosmology of Lionel Ziprin
Reveries of Dusk: The Forgotten Cosmology of Lionel Ziprin In the cavernous footnotes of American poetry, Lionel Ziprin (1924–2009) haunts with the density of a Kabbalist cipher — not easily parsed, never fully illuminated, yet indelibly engraved into certain hidden wood panels of the 20th century avant-garde. A Lower East Side mystic, Ziprin was a…
The Castle Whose Fangs Recall Blood
The Castle Whose Teeth Remember Blood Perched incisively upon the jagged limestone cliffs of central Slovakia, Čachtice Castle—originally Csejte vár—glares down upon the Váh river valley like a molar worn down by centuries of political grinding. Built in the mid-13th century as part of Hungary’s defensive ring against the Mongol invasions, the castle was, in…