Saturday afternoon. I took the Q train up to 57th Street, got out and walked down to Broadway and 50th, where I'd read that the Occupy Broadway action was taking place. Approaching, I saw a modest sized group of people on a concrete plaza set back from the street. … [Read more...]

Yesterday, Emily sent me the most wonderful end-of-semester gift a teacher could possibly hope for, Dodie Bellamy's (in)famous Cunt-Ups (Tender Buttons, 2001), portions of which I once skimmed in a book exhibit years ago, after which I often suggested it to … [Read more...]

Yesterday, while police in L.A. and Philadelphia were getting ready to solve their respective ruling classes' Occupy problems in a definitive manner, I was in Zuccotti Park holding an umbrella up against the chilly rain and shouting André Breton poems into the … [Read more...]

Late on Monday afternoon, Nancy and I arrived at the CUNY demo outside Baruch College's "Vertical Campus" (an ugly building resembling a smushed pyramid or a sci fi incubator for a futuristic plague) and eagerly joined the first rebellious crowd we saw. Soon we … [Read more...]

Friends report:G. tells me that his son, 18 years old and active in OWS, has witnessed a lot of the police violence that doesn't necessarily make it to YouTube. He was in the streets of the financial district for the action on the morning of November 17th, and said … [Read more...]

I wasn't going to go to Zuccotti Park today--there are limits, after all. Then I viewed a video of a remarkable press conference held at noon today by the OWS librarians and several attorneys (Norman Siegel and Gideon Oliver, who is president of the NYC chapter of … [Read more...]

It's been a long day so I'll make this a short post. It was nasty and cold and wet and sparsely peopled at Zuccotti Park around 5 p.m., and as I stood facing Broadway I had the funny experience of being the unofficial greeter for a whole slew of people who stopped … [Read more...]

At dusk on Sunday, I was standing inside the barricades facing Broadway and reading from Olga Cabral's Voice Over: Selected Poems (West End Press, 1993). Olga was a lovely woman of gentle demeanor, born in 1909, whom I met a few times in the 1980's and '90's. I … [Read more...]

All over the country, the tanks have rolled. Are rolling. It comes as no surprise, but is still a matter of outrage: at Occupy sites all over the "land of the free," bullying, vicious, indeed sadistic police forcing has occurred--is ongoing--against completely … [Read more...]

Pressed for time, I've been thinking about the virtues of Twitter. Why not describe the Foley Square rally and Brooklyn Bridge walk as an imaginary Twitter feed (minus all the cute abbreviations)?4:20 p.m. Arrival at Foley Square, greeted by tall banners of … [Read more...]