As a kid
I wanted to be you.
Swinging, from building to building,
across the cityscape,
sticking to walls
with velcroed hands and feet,
no fear of falling,
no Icarus complex
crippling your confidence
in upward mobility. Continue reading →
A review of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife.
Hemingway’s classic, A Moveable Feast, is a well-stewed blend of contradictions, much like the man himself. It is a crucible of a valentine, wrapped in vellum and barbed wire. Notorious for holding grudges and for viciously estranging himself from his peers, Papa’s trip down memory lane means not only warmed-over reminiscences, but also an opportunity to spit acid at Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, and Scott Fitzgerald, to name several. The bruised innocence underlying Hemingway’s sketches, reminds me of the Leonard Cohen lyrics (from “Tower of Song”): I ache in the places/where I used to play.
Continue reading →
Posted in Books, Press, Prose
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Tagged 1920s, Hadley Richardson, Hemingway, Jazz Age, John Biscello, Literary, paris, Paula McLain, Review, Scott Fitzgerald, The Paris Wife
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Consider the mole, a small
important god, unfettered
by dreams of flight
or fugitive arcs, gathering
briskly the dark into its labor,
leveling a dig
to assume no chances
or saviors
It’s in the eyes.
A hard crystal blue,
lovely and liquid,
charged by a hidden fever
wired to the source
and its tangled roots.
Ancient autumn tree
stripped of its skin,
nesting psychic lesions
that no one can see;
at best, can sense
the fragile center
wrapped in thick folds;
blue, raining in on itself,
without reprieve,
yet behind the gates of the season,
Hope, that thing without feathers,
bearing arms
of light, a refusal to go gently
into that good night.
She, falling through
a slipknot
cinched by Grief’s
hard hands; He,
minding gravity,
set a course for two,
at dawn’s first light.
John Biscello 