Review
Black Mystery School Pianists (and other writings) by Matt Shipp – reviewed
Carl Watson
I should start out this review by admitting that I know nothing about jazz. There are, of course, musicians I appreciate but in terms of the genre I am, sadly, ignorant. I have heard Matt play and I have a few of his solo re...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #12 – Suzi Kaplan Olmsted, Carl Watson, Arthur Nersesian
Carl Watson
Quarantine is effectively over (for now...) so this is the final Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading! We go out with a bang! This week features:
- Suzie Kaplan Olmsted (5:40)
- Carl Watson (23:40)
- Arthur Nersesian (38:5...
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Poem
the dead wife
Carl Watson
The dirt floor had to be leveled
And all the stones raked out,
Carried out in buckets and piled
In the yard as ballast against
The bowed foundation of the south wall.
There were boulders and bluestone
Slabs, some big ...
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Poem
125th Street
Carl Watson
125th Street
Once there was a Harlem of the mind,
In a New York of green youth and mystery,
Steaming manholes, fevered sleep,
When I was a pilgrim without ambition.
Characters with metal teeth and top hats,
Sn...
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Poem
Enjambment
Carl Watson
Enjambment
Gravity made this planet, sucking in rock dust
And gas, which, pressurized, went round.
Reproduction is a gravitational force, too,
Attraction packing bodies together.
Regard the highway lead...
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Art
Love and Strangulation
Carl Watson
The philosophers of the old romances say, and many specialists today concur, that desire is nothing more than the result of a necessary and continuous projection of the self into others; an unattainable wholeness is represen...
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Poem
Kiss of Kind
Carl Watson
Virtue and Fear
Stare at each other in the mirror,
They feed upon & tease each other
Until neither one remembers what it used to be.
That mirror’s name is Vanity,
It can make a body live in harmony ...
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Five years in Fleischmanns
Carl Watson
As some of you may or may not know, I have been trying to restore an old barn in the Catskills for several years. I had thought of writing funny little stories about my experiences but never produced anything. This year th...
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Story
Late Night Phone Call from the Used to Be
Carl Watson
An excerpt from backwards the drowned go dreaming
People like to blame things—they like to pretend life is an accident, that it’s not their fault. But accidents can be intentional. We make ourselves magnets by o...
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NEW
A Tale of an Affair
Carl Watson
An excerpt from Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming now available at Amazon
Sometimes the speed works for you. Sometimes you’re left behind. The latter is my usual state. It was the early 1980s, West Lakeview. Subtle ...
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