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Stuart Krimko

I’m sitting up in bed, or on the couch, as it were, where I have been trying to sleep off the slew of vodka-and-tonics I downed last night at our reading here in Portland. Shawn Vandor, whose Fire at the end of the rainbow was just , and I read at . Happily I had the chance to meet and fraternize with thethe’s own . Happily too I have had the chance to experience a temperate spring. In my new adopted home we have a desert spring, which is an entirely different beast. Anyway, it’s been good to see green grass against mud and cherry trees in blossom. All of this reminds me of the wonderful lineage of cold muddy spring poems. There’s ‘Spring and All’ By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the waste [...]

I recommend playing all the videos at the same time. Some enchanted evening You may see a stranger, you may see a stranger Across a crowded room And somehow you know, You know even then That somewhere you’ll see her Again and again. Some enchanted evening Someone may be laughin’, You may hear her laughin’ Across a crowded room And night after night, As strange as it seems The sound of her laughter Will sing in your dreams. Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, Wise men never try. Some enchanted evening When you find your true love, When you feel her call you Across a crowded room, Then fly to her side, And make her your own Or all through your life you May dream all alone. Once you have found her, Never let her go. Once you have found her, Never let [...]

Sometimes when I happy get I turn on my television set and disappear into its glow like a pixelated crow I flap my wings so pure and black and feel like there’s no going back inside the tube I’ll stay forever consider thrown the simulacrum lever if my mother comes home and turns it off at her love I’ll scoff happy on my own terms you see like a Titleist balanced on a tee waiting for the coming thwack to send me into orbit’s knack for spinning guests in skyward order free I am a floating boarder everywhere I go I smile I see my reflection in bathroom tile my grin it gleams with the purity of creams freshly descended from the cow of bacon from the virgin sow who snorts and oinks as I come close we are friends the farmer knows and so he waves as I walk [...]

I have nothing to say today, or nothing specific, only miscellany, no fashion thing has occurred to me. Here you have an image of Ferula scorodosma, the plant whose dried sap is used to make , a rather pungent spice. I received a packet of asafoetida in a box of spices given to me as a gift on my recent birthday – it tasted quite good in a stew of lamb’s neck and potatoes, simmered with orange juice and zest and some milk that had been heated up for coffee earlier in the day and left on the stove. Speaking of nothing to say, I have been thinking this week about ‘Nothing To Say,’ an intensely sprawling poem from ‘s latest collection, . The poem takes its title from the opening of John Cage’s ‘Lecture on Nothing.’ But where Cage seems to calmly meditate his absent predicament, Lauterbach tears into [...]

I’m don’t consider myself a comfortable elegist (is anyone?), but reading of Alexander McQueen’s death this morning forces me to take up the mantle. I’m not a huge fashion-buff, but I made the walk past the McQueen store on 14th Street a highlight of my daily commute when I worked in Chelsea. His clothes seemed to me wild and well-tailored in the English way. His suits would have fit beautifully in show at the V&A in London a few years back; he’s one of the only contemporary designers who would have fit, I think; and I mean fit while also doing his own, completely contemporary thing. That show, by the way, was a revelation. So, Mr McQueen, we are sad that you are not with us anymore. Here is a tribute, from the inimitable Stevie Nicks as she gets done up for a Rolling Stone photo shoot. Godspeed.

We all have fantasy careers. I’ve always thought it would be great to be an Off-Broadway actor. I would invite my cohorts over to my Hell’s Kitchen apartment after a weeknight show, and we would drink Powers whisky and smoke cigarettes until the wee hours; mornings would be slow, slightly hazy, and then during the afternoons the energy would return, the big emotional build-up to the next show. Lights, applause, repeat. In lieu of this, and given the opportunity to contribute here at The The, I thought I would try my hand at fashion correspondent for a second week. No jet-setting, alas, but rather a comfortable seat at my L.A. desk, from which I look through the phantasmagoric looking glass (i.e. internets) at my neighbors, the Rodarte sisters, showing their Fall 2010 collection back in New York. In case you haven’t heard of these young phenoms, have a look at [...]