One reason why I’m currently researching Jane’s Addiction is because their show I attended on November 13, 1990 in Chapel Hill, N.C. was a week after the first Senate race of Jesse Helms v. Harvey Gantt, who was an African-American architect that led the race the whole time before barely losing at the end, after […]

Here’s the first paragraph of Tracy K. Smith‘s introduction to American Journal, an extraordinary new collection of 50 poems by 50 living poets selected by her.  I think hers is the best explanation for this kind of work that I’ve ever read.  And I believe it applies to all sorts of documentary poetry, not just writing. […]

The paperback edition of Gene Smith’s Sink came out last week.  The cover, I just learned today when I opened a box of them, is the one we (me, my editor, the designer) strongly preferred for the hardback, with no images.  It’s a literary book, we argued, not a photography book.  But the higher-ups overrode […]

This photograph just in from longtime collaborator Kate Joyce in Santa Fe.  She made it just after the Gene Smith’s Sink event at Big Ears.  Jason Moran and Rachel Grimes played piano tunes intermixed with my readings and Jem Cohen’s short film based on a chapter in my book.  I’m lucky to be able to work with […]

Today is Nicole Rudick’s last day as managing editor of The Paris Review, a job she’s held for eight years. She’s moving on to her own writing including finishing a book.  Her new era is exciting, but it gives me pause to look back.  I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if it hadn’t […]

Today I met the experimental musician Giovanni Succi for lunch at a restaurant in the countryside outside Bologna. Imagine your favorite eastern North Carolina barbecue house if it was homemade Italian food, or in Durham imagine Saltbox Seafood Joint with Italian food. No menu, you just discuss what they have for the day and what you […]

The summer 2006 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review arrived at my house in Chatham County, North Carolina and I was knocked down by four paintings by film artist Bill Morrison reproduced in that issue along with an introduction by Lawrence Weschler.  I was later coming to Morrison’s seminal film work than some people and these paintings […]

From “Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker” by Susan Howe. “The will to produce poetic film, and particularly poetic documentary, still runs up against a wall of perplexity and indifference.” – Dziga Vertov. 1926. Not much has changed in 92 years. “I am an American poet writing in the English language. I […]

I’m excited and grateful for a Gene Smith’s Sink event at Big Ears Festival this Friday March 23, featuring brief readings by me special performances by Big Ears musicians Rachel Grimes, Jason Moran, and Aine O’Dwyer, plus Jem Cohen’s short film, Chuck-will’s-widow, based on a chapter in Sink. This event means more than most to me. While documenting […]