-
Categories
-
Recent Work
From Blue Peninsula
“My son’s illness is eight years old and has no name. It started when he was fourteen. He is now twenty-two. It is taking away his ability to walk and to reason. It is getting worse, some years more rapidly than others.” read more
-
Archives
- January 2018
- November 2016
- October 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
- June 2014
- April 2014
- February 2014
- November 2013
- August 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- December 2012
- October 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- August 2010
- February 2010
- August 2009
- June 2009
- March 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
Blog New York
Benevolent Contagion
January 24, 2018
Before today, I had not posted on my website since the day of my older son, Ike’s, death, now more than a year ago. I had found comfort for months in the photo of him and in the words of W. S. Merwin and Agnes Martin that had reached me that day. read more
Thanksgiving
November 23, 20163 comments
During these months in North Carolina with Ike, he is the steady focus of my days. Now 33, his undiagnosed degenerative illness has shaped his life, and ours, now for 19 years.
Tags: Agnes Martin, beauty, caregivers, death, happiness, hospice, Ike Levy, Isaac Robert Levy, life, Psalm 143, thanksgiving, undiagnosed illness, W.S. Merwin
A Firm Persuasion
November 3, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014, at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital’s Art Ability, several hundred art lovers interested in works created by individuals with physical and cognitive challenges had the opportunity to view the work of Charles Blackwell read more
Tags: art, art and medicine, ArtAbility, blind, Bryn Mawr Rehab, Charles Blackwell, improv, intellectual disabilities, jazz, Melanie Vi Levy, poet, Robynn Takayama, traumatic brain injury, William Blake
On Her Plate
October 8, 20143 comments
“Let me tell you what’s on my plate.”
It’s Mom on the phone, from her hospital bed in NC to me at my desk in NJ, and I think, Ah, she wants to talk about her upcoming pacemaker procedure. read more
Tags: Aging, Atul Gawande, Families, Healthcare, Kezar Lake, Medicine, mothers, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Sarah Manguso, Two Kinds of Decay
sheen of stoma, pith of summer, and a sky grown clear
June 6, 2014
MoMA’s sculpture garden has Isa Genzken’s 28-foot rose and the New York Botanical Garden, (May through September) “Great American Gardens of the Early 20th Century read more
Tags: Eavan Boland, Edna St. Vincent Millay, gardens, Isa Genzken, Museum of Modern Art, New York Botanical Garden, Ruth Stone, summer, women
Crocuses, UConn, and Derek Jeter
April 12, 20141 comment
Typically around this time of year crocuses incite a gasp of delight, and they did again this year — just a few days ago in the backyard of the rented house to which I moved a few months ago and the next day, more robust ones, read more
Tags: amazement, baseball, basketball, Breanna Stewart, Derek Jeter, essays, Floyd Skloot, form, heroes, hybrid form, lyric essays, New School, nonfiction, Peter Cooley, poetry, sports, standards, UConn women's basketball, writing
Stillness, Nothing-Happening Moments
April 10, 2014
In March at a beach in North Carolina, a group of people I have known for a long time gathered read more
Tags: Akhil Sharma, Burning Down the House, Charles Baxter, experience, Family Life, fiction, Kawabata, memory, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, senses, stillness, writing
Onset of Spring?
February 1, 2014
Most of this post — Robin Robertson’s poem, the photographs taken in November in Frenchtown, NJ — was compiled in a moment of late November pause, read more
Tags: Calendars, family, February 1, Festivals, Frenchtown, Gaelic, Gerald Stern, holidays, Imbolc, NJ, North Carolina, poetry, Robin Robertson, Samhain, Spring, winter