Jenny Browne » good reads

Modern Love

Jenny — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:00:47 +0000

Love Brian Rea’s leopards for my essay in today’s New York Times.

book review, radio show and the fat of the land

Jenny — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:31:10 +0000

The Texas Observer recently published my review of Tales for Little Rebels, NYU Press’ new anthology of radical kid lit.

Also, the lively JoEllen Schilke was kind enough to invite me on her radio show, Art In Your Ear. You can listen to it on their archives. Scroll down and click on 1/30/09. I’m the second half, so if you fast forward about 30 minutes in, you get to hear Tom Waits do his thing and then me ramble on about poetry for a while.

Finally, my friend Martha Silano’s husband is featured in Bon Appetit this month talking about foraging for foods in the wild. His blog, Fat of the Land is good fun and great cooking. Makes me want to go eat the cactus in my front yard. Or something.

El Dia De Los Muertos

Jenny — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:12:37 +0000

Long time, no news. Actually, there’s been lots of news but also lots of sadness. That, and obsessive political blog reading. So for now, here’s a picture of our Day of the Dead altar and an elegy to one of my favorite poets, in memory.

Elegy on Toy Piano

By Dean Young

For Kenneth Koch

You don’t need a pony

to connect you to the unseeable

or an airplane to connect you to the sky.

Necessary it is to love to live

and there are many manuals

but in all important ways

one is on one’s own.

You need not cut off your hand.

No need to eat a bouquet.

Your head becomes a peach pit.

Your tongue a honeycomb.

Necessary it is to live to love,

to charge into the burning tower

then charge back out

and necessary it is to die.

Even for the trees, even for the pony

connecting you to what can’t be grasped.

The injured gazelle falls behind the

herd. One last wild enjambment.

Because of the sores in his mouth,

the great poet struggles with a dumpling.

His work has enlarged the world

but the world is about to stop including him.

He is the tower the world runs out of.

When something becomes ash,

there’s nothing you can do to turn it back.

About this, even diamonds do not lie.

Words and Wine – Local Flavor

Jenny — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:34:47 +0000

So much fun to be back with old Evansville friends and fellow Michener Center fellows to read and drink wine at Patchwork Central. Great local cheese and vegetables too. Here are few articles about the event, one from the arts columnist and one from the (a-hem) social column of the Evansville Courier and Press. (Scroll down to read our bit).

Liz Mandrell, Justin Helfrich and me before the reading.

Spring Break Reading List

Jenny — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:52:38 +0000

The Bad Wife Handbook - Rachel Zucker’s fantastic new book of poems

A Year to Live - Stephen Levine (thanks Hondo Dave!)

The Art of Simple Food - Alice Waters (Simple, HA! But all worth it so far.)

six poetry manuscripts from my Gemini Ink class

Because Why - Sarah Fox (Don’t know what took me so long to get to this one, a knockout!)

Lunch Poems - Frank O’Hara (…for the nth time, never the last)

Gulf Music -Robert Pinsky (try “Poem With Lines in Any Order”)

Moveable Types - Jenny Boully (a slow sigh, the good kind)

Maureen Dowd (as the kids say, LOL)

What’s on your list?