It feels right to see the faces of so many hopeful and weary, desperate and giddy men just outside the gates of success on the cover of SIDETRACKED. Voloshin’s poignant, funny poem ennobles their dreams and struggles as much as it does his own. Thank you, @PaulDryBooks!

Dan Friedman pays tribute to Samuel Menashe on the hundredth anniversary of his birth, September 16, 1925.

Friday Links for the afternoon crowd — Dappled Things with @CatholicPods @JMWSPT @BorisDralyuk & more https://t.co/ApmC2hu333

Dear friends. My new book in which I consider lost books, burned libraries, Goethe, the lives and deaths of Presocratic philosophers, Paris, statues of Niobe, patterns in history, war, displacement, the evils of ambition, and Pachynian tuna is out in the world next month.

An honor to say a few words about Jane Greer, poet and laugh riot.

(1/5) The focus has (rightfully) been on the BLS firing but another strange thing has been the admin's enthusiasm for a weaker US$, which has lost 8% value this year.

Honored to be among the contributors to this tribute to the great Jane Greer. Thanks to @Zina_GomezLiss for asking me to be part of it and putting it together so beautifully.

Deeply grateful to Sawad Hussain for selecting my translation for the Momentum Grant and to the team at @wwborders for publishing Mordovian Cross, a tale of racial profiling, revenge, and embroidery. 🧵🩸 https://t.co/wfN0Z2OpF2

All happy families are alike: They read Vernon Duke aloud to each other. https://t.co/9CsWBlhvzX

Our days aren’t bright, but neither were the days Vernon Duke braved. He never lost the spring in his step, and I aim to follow in his tracks. Join me, will ya? A playlist of Duke tracks to accompany PASSPORT TO PARIS AND LOS ANGELES POEMS (@PaulDryBooks):

I wrote for @Eurozine about how we need to stop treating cultures colonized by Russia as appendages to Russia (with some Shevchenko and Pushkin thrown in for good measure). https://t.co/S8gC7tHX3B

Top-flight avvocati. All their clients guac free.

I find it easy to understand why Rothko, Gottlieb, and thousands of others would have recoiled from communism after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland. The passage quoted also seems to start the Cold War in 1940, when the US was in talks with the USSR.

Here I am, in Tulsa, finishing my translation of Andrey’s LOST SOLDIERS, while its author watches buildings burn from his window in Kyiv. A passage I have just revised in this historical detective novel feels all too contemporary:

Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” in limerick form: In childhood ‘tis easy to feel Th’eternal suffusing the real, But as the beholder Gets steadily older, It doesn’t seem such a big deal. (I wish I could lay claim to this masterpiece, but sadly, it’s anonymous.)

1/2 Hello from Odesa, Ukraine, friends. An intense 24hours here, ranging from sleepless night of bombardments to a wondrous meeting of poetry with kids at our Poetry Studio ( https://t.co/7CQ4Qe2NjZ) here in Odesa.

Did you know? Today, Sonny Rollins remains the sole surviving musician from the iconic 1958 photograph “A Great Day in Harlem”. Captured by Art Kane, the image gathered 58 of the most celebrated jazz musicians on a stoop in East Harlem—an unforgettable moment in music history.

Tonight over my head a russian killer-guest was eliminated. But there are still many of them in Ukrainian skies.

I was saddened a few minutes ago to learn of the death of New Formalist Frederick Turner, a prolific poet, translator & critic with interests in the verse novel & science fiction poetry. I had long meals with him twice; he was friendly & fascinating. https://t.co/nInSmfPo1Z

Even if this post brings no joy to anyone else, it will at least have afforded me the pleasure of typing out the phrase “dapper corporate legume.”

A little piece on another Hollywood émigré—a man who went from helping Osip Mandelstam to getting knocked about by the Three Stooges. And if you want to know what Mr. Peanut has to do with it, you’ll have to read to the end:

Fascinating slice of American life in the first half of the 20th century. @BorisDralyuk translations are superb.