Wednesday, March 28, 2018

the last book I ever read (Off to the Side: A Memoir by Jim Harrison, excerpt ten)

from Off to the Side: A Memoir by Jim Harrison:

As a college senior I had finally heard my first poetry reading, with Galway Kinnell reading “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World,” from his recently published book. I was overwhelmed but my own capabilities were so far from his astutely lyrical cityscape that there was nothing more to imitate. I heard the Mexican painter David Siquerios speak and regretted again that I had no talent as a painter. I talked a number of times in a smoke and coffee shop with Abe Rattner, an abstract expressionist, about his car trip with Henry Miller. After an hour Rattner asked, “Why do you stay here in Michigan? There’s nothing for you here.” I said I had a wife and child and he only nodded.



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