Letter 16: Could 11, 2022

I’ve been relatively disenchanted with the notion of the Letters from the Desk sequence these days. I simply need to hunker down and full unfinished essays on artwork and books which have taken a lot of my psychological house in current weeks. I might simply wax poetic on any topic, making it appear to be extra essential than it’s, when actually all of the issues I’m interested by are of equal worth. They’re all worthy of prolonged critique. There’s a relatively intensive checklist in my thoughts that’s shifting round and making unusual noises. Suffice to say that I’m presently 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 shall 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’s going to additionally characterize 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 the town that makes dwelling right here distinctive?

Search for it.