Posts from Hamilton Fish Park Library

You have not crossed the bridges I have crossed.
You have not listened to the music I have listened to.
You have not been in the top of the World Trade Center the way I have been there.
You have not seen the waves I have seen.
You have not fallen from horses the way I have fallen.
You have not felt the guns on your neck the way I have felt them.
You have not been in the sea with a big storm in a little boat the way I have been.

—Excerpt from "Don’t Give Me Advice," by Luis Marin, Tompkins Square CRW

This month is National Poetry Month, and here at the Center for Reading and Writing (CRW) some 

The Tree of Life opens May 27th in theaters; of course, having not yet seen the film there is little I can say about it (the studio released only a few plot details), but a discussion of his previous films may inform a deeper viewing more than simply assuming a passive stance. All too often, we are encouraged to receive films or books this way, in some vague popular idea that our minds are storage receptacles and that we simply experience a movie more or less in the fashion the filmmakers intended. I would like to counter this idea and promote a very much active participation when people 'read' a book or 'watch' a movie, and to counter it properly I will invoke and introduce 

It is my day off and I have some errands to do! However, that shouldn't keep me from what I really love: WRITING BLOG POSTS.

It is striking the United States has not developed a discourse of precarity. Today, the gap between rich and poor stands at its widest in history, and the unemployment rate hangs around at 8.9%; this statistic does not include the long-term unemployed, the underemployed (those working in part-time positions), and those simply not seeking work at all. There is no discourse or vocabulary for precarity, yet it is structurally integral to how our economy (whatever that word might mean) functions.

"All profound life is heavy with the impossible."
                                                  —Georges Bataille

If you're anything like me, you'll be walking down the street thinking about science fiction and think to yourself, "Say, what is the Ur-phenomenon of humanity's Utopian drive(s)?" Let's explore this in the best para-academic fashion possible.

If you're anything like me, you've been glued to your computer screen for more than a week observing the will of an entire people force a reckoning with its despotic ruler, against all cynical logic that insurrections and revolutions somehow irretrievably belong to ages past. What is the context for this momentuous event that will undoubtedly have repercussions for years to come? 

I had not seen my friends S. or F. for quite some time.

We were standing outside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 5th Avenue; traffic buzzed and halted around us. Sitting on the steps like the boys and girls in Rome who hang around the Spanish Steps, smoke cigarettes and behave like the images they see on television who are modelled after them, I think to myself, we are encumbered in one city by Ghostbusters, in fiction parading out before us, haunted in another at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Citizens take heed of your cities that hallmark events that never happened, I think. I see a stray dog wander by; perhaps it had found some undiscovered corner of Bryant Park to 

There's not much time left to make it to NYPL's many NaNoWriMo monthly write-ins! How is your novel coming along? What is your word count? Are you ahead of the curve or do you have some catching up to do?

Need some encouragement or inspiration? Here's another look at a NaNoWriMoer for 2010!

Please visit nanowrimo.org for more information.

Throughout the month, we'll be profiling some NYPL patrons who are participating in this year's National Novel Writing Month. Please visit nanowrimo.org for more information and inspiration, and get writing!