Andrew Epstein

Now I'm worried about Mr. Clean's great-granddaughter

Street Musicians On reading grief through John Ashbery, or the other way round

beautiful piece by my friend Hugh Foley on Ashbery and grief:

Very little has changed in my conception of what the ideal life might look like. You sing a song and this provides for you to sit with your friends a little while.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Thanks for the heads up -- looking forward to reading this!

The Helens of Troy, New York by Bernadette Mayer | New Directions Profiles of all the women named Helen in Troy, NY, with poems and images, mixing the classical with the ordinary and delightful intelligence with irreverence. everybody died there’s nothing more to s...

And then there is this book by the poet Bernadette Mayer, in which she interviewed, photographed, and wrote profiles of all the women named Helen in Troy, NY www.ndbooks.com/book/the-hel...

Collective Ashbery — THE FLOW CHART FOUNDATION

I think it's from his interview with Mark Ford -- I found you posted about it here! "in an interview with Mark Ford...Ashbery: “I had visions of people sitting around and getting stoned, reading it aloud, and saying, ‘Man, listen to this!’” www.flowchartfoundation.org/collectiveas...

Did We Get the History of Modern American Art Wrong? The standard story of 1960s arts is one of Abstract Expressionism leading into Pop Art and minimalism. A Whitney show proposes an altogether different one centered on surrealism.

"the curators should have looked elsewhere for a way to understand the role of Surrealism in the American art of the 1960s.John Ashbery...wrote some suggestive words on Surrealism that have been too little noticed"- Barry Schwabsky on Surrealism @ Whitney www.thenation.com/article/cult...

James Schuyler’s “Empathy and New Year” Around New Year’s Eve, I often think of James Schuyler’s great and moving poem about the turning of the year, “Empathy and New Year” (which first appeared as the opening poe…

"New Year is nearly here
and who, knowing himself, would
endanger his desires
resolving them
in a formula?"
-- James Schuyler, "Empathy and New Year"
newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/j...

Joe Brainard’s The Complete C Comics | The Brooklyn Rail This collection makes clear how much pleasure Brainard took not only in the form of the comic but in the form of a magazine of comics: the collaborative methodology of passing work between friends, th...

Madelyn Dawson writes about Joe Brainard and "The Complete C Comics" for the Brooklyn Rail -- brooklynrail.org/2025/12/art_...

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD:
RELAX!
“People of the World: Relax!” is excerpted (at LARB) from “The Complete C Comics,” a collection of Joe Brainard’s innovative work: lareviewofbooks.org/article/peop...

‘A Cartoon Revival’ | Lucy Sante The illustrated poems, satirical ads, and talking shoes that filled the pages of C Comics.

Lucy Sante on Joe Brainard and the Complete C Comics

Wait until you teach it when you realize you're somehow now Clarissa's age

My daughter Casey wrote this review of the new Mountain Goats album! @caseyepsteingross.bsky.social

The Mona Lisa Caper: Picasso, Apollinaire, Géry-Pieret | Montmartre Artists' Studios Why did Picasso and Apollinaire head out into the night with the intention of throwing two antique Iberian sculptures into the Seine? Did Géry-Piéret steal the Mona Lisa?

Favorite detail: Apollinaire's pal and secretary, who had a taste for theft, was leaving a gathering and "is said to have asked Apollinaire’s companion Marie Laurencin if she “needed anything from the Louvre” montmartrefootsteps.com/mona-lisa-th...

Did Guillaume Apollinaire Steal the Mona Lisa? | TheCollector The great 20th century writer Guillaume Apollinaire was once embroiled in an art heist. But did he really steal the Mona Lisa?

One of the best Louvre heist stories -- the time Apollinaire and Picasso were wrongly accused of stealing the Mona Lisa (but were definitely neck-deep in a case of statues being stolen from the museum)
www.thecollector.com/did-guillaum...

COVER STORY | Neko Case Won't Be Tamed Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover your favorite albums and films.

On 'Neon Grey Midnight Green,' Neko Case insists that grief sharpens rather than clouds reality, and that connection—human and animal alike—is the antidote to dread.

Matthew Holman's Frank O'Hara & MoMA: an NNYSS book launch! (with John Yau) The Network for New York School Studies presents the online launch of Matthew Holman's 'Frank O'Hara and MoMA' with Matthew and John Yau.

This Thursday, there will be a Zoom talk between Matthew Holman & John Yau about Holman's new book, "Frank O'Hara & MoMA: New York Poet, Global Curator," hosted by the Network for New York School Studies @nysnetwork.bsky.social. See here for details: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/matthew-ho...

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project...

It's the end of The Best American Poetry.

I wrote about the forty-year anthology project, poetry’s place in Big Five publishing, and editor David Lehman's culture wars vision of American verse.

defector.com/good-riddanc...

The Wildest Blackberry Poems by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Others Our critic A.O. Scott forages the world’s most poetic fruit.

"Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Thanks for this!

I've been told that the screenshot is actually from "Reservation Dogs," which is also directed by Sterlin Harjo, who (like Brainard) is from Oklahoma and is a big Brainard fan.

Too bad Wikipedia calls him “Jim Brainard” and links to a page about a Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, who doesn’t, as far as I can tell, make art

I haven't seen it yet, but word has it that the new show "The Lowdown" uses a painting by Joe Brainard (!?) as a plot point, and features a character reading "I Remember"?

Dial-A-Poem, a Very Analog Project of the ’60s, Goes Global

Dial-A-Poem, a Very Analog Project of the ’60s, Goes Global www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/a...

A program for a close reading symposium at Emory University on November 7, 2025, in Room 208 in Convocation Hall, from 8:15 to 5:15, with breakfast, lunch, and panels on studying, teaching, and evaluating close reading, and close reading across the disciplines

If you're in or near Atlanta, or *super juiced* 😜 about close reading and love to travel, come to Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century: A Symposium at Emory University on Friday, November 7. And hear from these superstars...

Amazing

read these two pulp novels the last few days, both written under pseudonyms & with amazing poetry connections—“Always Love a Stranger” (1961) by Joe LeSueur as “Roger Davis” & “Vietnam Nurse” (1966) by Fanny Howe as “Della Field”

Opera, illness, gay cosmopolitans, S&M, glorious poems: I wrote about the poet James Schuyler & Nathan Kernan’s excellent new biography. Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/there-was-... @fsgbooks.bsky.social

How the Poet James Schuyler Wrung Sense from Sensibility Schuyler once told a friend that “life had been after him with a sledgehammer.” But the poet’s work was sharp and humane, a marvel of twentieth-century literature.

Dan Chiasson has a great review of the new James Schuyler biography by Nathan Kernan in the New Yorker: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Happy birthday to John Ashbery, who would’ve turned 98 today. “The past is dust and ashes, and this incommensurably wide way leads to the pragmatic and kinetic future.”

newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/o...