John Latta
@lattaj.bsky.social
Poet, birder. Used to bloviate at Isola di Rifiuti.
Quick nod and amen for Roland Barthes (b. 12 November 1915), all style, no system: “the fragment breaks up what I would call the smooth finish, the composition, discourse constructed to give a final meaning to what one says, which is the general rule of all past rhetoric . . . the fragment is (1/2)
November 12, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Quick nod and amen for Roland Barthes (b. 12 November 1915), all style, no system: “the fragment breaks up what I would call the smooth finish, the composition, discourse constructed to give a final meaning to what one says, which is the general rule of all past rhetoric . . . the fragment is (1/2)
Saw Ira Sachs’s new movie _Peter Hujar’s Day_, based on the recently-found transcript of a lost tape recording made by Linda Rosenkrantz (author of _Talk_ (NYRB, 2015)). Two things: Hujar’s amusing and gently-dismissive report of photographing an Om-insistent and somewhat pedantic Allen Ginsberg.
November 11, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Saw Ira Sachs’s new movie _Peter Hujar’s Day_, based on the recently-found transcript of a lost tape recording made by Linda Rosenkrantz (author of _Talk_ (NYRB, 2015)). Two things: Hujar’s amusing and gently-dismissive report of photographing an Om-insistent and somewhat pedantic Allen Ginsberg.
Reposted by John Latta
Graciela Iturbide / Sin título, Japón, 2014
November 10, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Graciela Iturbide / Sin título, Japón, 2014
Reposted by John Latta
Graciela Iturbide / Antes de la matanza
(Before the slaughter), La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992
(Before the slaughter), La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992
November 10, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Graciela Iturbide / Antes de la matanza
(Before the slaughter), La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992
(Before the slaughter), La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992
“Stuck in Flushing.” (Annals of things I never thought I’d have the opportunity to say.)
November 9, 2025 at 11:48 PM
“Stuck in Flushing.” (Annals of things I never thought I’d have the opportunity to say.)
Reposted by John Latta
Graciela Iturbide / Benarés, India, 1999
November 9, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Graciela Iturbide / Benarés, India, 1999
Two photographs by Graciela Iturbide, out of a tremendous exhibit at the International Center of Photography, in New York City. “El señor de los pájaros, Nayarit, México,” 1985 and “Ritual, Benarés, India,” 1998.
November 8, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Two photographs by Graciela Iturbide, out of a tremendous exhibit at the International Center of Photography, in New York City. “El señor de los pájaros, Nayarit, México,” 1985 and “Ritual, Benarés, India,” 1998.
Wow. Series, miniatures, the unfinished. No better genre.
Josef Albers / Mountain Journey, Tamzunchale, Jacala, Mexico, n.d.
November 8, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Wow. Series, miniatures, the unfinished. No better genre.
I recall seeing The Alternative Press’s Ken Mikolowski c. 1974 reading in Ann Arbor out of a tiny book printed by the legendary Walter Hamady’s Perishable Press. And joking about how the poems in the book, Thank You Call Again (1973), hardly deserved the impeccable fine letterpress presentation.
I am SO happy to be able to share the wonderful cover for DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE: THE ALTERNATIVE PRESS coming in March from Wayne State UP. The cover has it all—postcards, letterpress, a bison. Beautifully designed, as it happens, by Lindsey Cleworth, who grew up in my/our hometown.
November 6, 2025 at 2:25 PM
I recall seeing The Alternative Press’s Ken Mikolowski c. 1974 reading in Ann Arbor out of a tiny book printed by the legendary Walter Hamady’s Perishable Press. And joking about how the poems in the book, Thank You Call Again (1973), hardly deserved the impeccable fine letterpress presentation.
Reposted by John Latta
Like Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow-Book, "Abū Zayd’s Rain-Book reads like it could have been written yesterday, its author less a scholar than an accidental poet, which is to say a kind of lightning rod."
Eric Bies reviews David Larsen's translation of THE BOOK OF RAIN.
ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/10/30/a...
Eric Bies reviews David Larsen's translation of THE BOOK OF RAIN.
ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/10/30/a...
The Book of Rain
The Book of Rain By Abū Zayd Al-Anṣāri Translated by David Larsen Wave Books. 2025. Reviewed by Eric Bies David Larsen is an expert translator of premodern Arabic texts. In 2017 Wave Books publishe…
ocreviewofbooks.org
October 30, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Like Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow-Book, "Abū Zayd’s Rain-Book reads like it could have been written yesterday, its author less a scholar than an accidental poet, which is to say a kind of lightning rod."
Eric Bies reviews David Larsen's translation of THE BOOK OF RAIN.
ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/10/30/a...
Eric Bies reviews David Larsen's translation of THE BOOK OF RAIN.
ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/10/30/a...
Looking forward to reading this.
I am SO happy to be able to share the wonderful cover for DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE: THE ALTERNATIVE PRESS coming in March from Wayne State UP. The cover has it all—postcards, letterpress, a bison. Beautifully designed, as it happens, by Lindsey Cleworth, who grew up in my/our hometown.
November 5, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Looking forward to reading this.
Thursday in New York City:
November 3, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Thursday in New York City:
A new month. Somebody needs to put it up here—John Ashbery, out of The Double Dream of Spring (1970):
November 1, 2025 at 5:30 PM
A new month. Somebody needs to put it up here—John Ashbery, out of The Double Dream of Spring (1970):
Reposted by John Latta
MP Pratheesh,
from “The Burial”
from “The Burial”
November 1, 2025 at 5:30 AM
MP Pratheesh,
from “The Burial”
from “The Burial”
Stray remark c. 1948 by William Carlos Williams: “It is shocking for the uninformed to look at a Picasso or to pick up a poem by Rosalie Moore. He can’t understand them.” Struck by that seemingly provocative equation (Picasso = Moore) since I didn’t recall ever hearing of the latter. So, two poems:
November 1, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Stray remark c. 1948 by William Carlos Williams: “It is shocking for the uninformed to look at a Picasso or to pick up a poem by Rosalie Moore. He can’t understand them.” Struck by that seemingly provocative equation (Picasso = Moore) since I didn’t recall ever hearing of the latter. So, two poems:
I keep thinking about these lines toward the end of Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, a lengthy and affectionate look at the Statue of Liberty, both elegiac and rather fierce (“a masked woman draped in military gear . . . suited to action in the field”), and wholly without irony or cynicism.
October 31, 2025 at 3:17 PM
I keep thinking about these lines toward the end of Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, a lengthy and affectionate look at the Statue of Liberty, both elegiac and rather fierce (“a masked woman draped in military gear . . . suited to action in the field”), and wholly without irony or cynicism.
Reposted by John Latta
Photograph of someone we are not sure we remember
October 30, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Photograph of someone we are not sure we remember
Out of Susan Howe’s _Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives_ (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2014), a tiny book with, curiously, a wrongly-placed, or -selected or -transcribed “penciled text fragment” of Emily Dickinson’s (see p. 57 and pertinent endnote):
October 29, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Out of Susan Howe’s _Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives_ (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2014), a tiny book with, curiously, a wrongly-placed, or -selected or -transcribed “penciled text fragment” of Emily Dickinson’s (see p. 57 and pertinent endnote):
Upcoming (Thursday, November 6 at 7:30 pm):
A DANCE OF LIFE:
Violin Music of the AIDS Era
Giancarlo Latta, Violin and Curator
Robert Fleitz, Piano
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
A DANCE OF LIFE:
Violin Music of the AIDS Era
Giancarlo Latta, Violin and Curator
Robert Fleitz, Piano
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
A Dance of Life — New York City AIDS Memorial
Violinist Giancarlo Latta – in partnership with ChamberQUEER and pianist Robert Fleitz – presents A Dance of Life, a recital program that revives and spotlights a remarkable but overlooked repertoire ...
www.nycaidsmemorial.org
October 27, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Upcoming (Thursday, November 6 at 7:30 pm):
A DANCE OF LIFE:
Violin Music of the AIDS Era
Giancarlo Latta, Violin and Curator
Robert Fleitz, Piano
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
A DANCE OF LIFE:
Violin Music of the AIDS Era
Giancarlo Latta, Violin and Curator
Robert Fleitz, Piano
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
Out of a somewhat fugitive magazine called Luigi Ten Co, edited by Whit Griffin and Michael Klausman, two early poems by Ronald Johnson, “sent [by the twenty-four year old] to Louis Zukofsky in early 1959 to which he generously responded with commentary and encouragement.” Uncollected in the works?
October 27, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Out of a somewhat fugitive magazine called Luigi Ten Co, edited by Whit Griffin and Michael Klausman, two early poems by Ronald Johnson, “sent [by the twenty-four year old] to Louis Zukofsky in early 1959 to which he generously responded with commentary and encouragement.” Uncollected in the works?
Out to West Lake in the 33° F morning: grass frost-spiked, thin fog bunched up in the low spots. A fox sparrow’s meager half-song, like a boy learning how to whistle. Two new beaver-downed trees near the small pond. There, too, a merlin strafing a tiny assembly of green-winged teal, without success.
October 26, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Out to West Lake in the 33° F morning: grass frost-spiked, thin fog bunched up in the low spots. A fox sparrow’s meager half-song, like a boy learning how to whistle. Two new beaver-downed trees near the small pond. There, too, a merlin strafing a tiny assembly of green-winged teal, without success.
Newish work in the new Shearsman (145 & 146), thanks to Kelvin Corcoran and Tony Frazer. Here’re a few opening entries out of “July Notes,” out of a manuscript called—after (no kiddin’) Dickens—“Notes for General Circulation.”
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Newish work in the new Shearsman (145 & 146), thanks to Kelvin Corcoran and Tony Frazer. Here’re a few opening entries out of “July Notes,” out of a manuscript called—after (no kiddin’) Dickens—“Notes for General Circulation.”
New to me. David Larsen's (of _Names of the Lion_ and _The Book of Rain_, both out of Wave Books) translation blog. Arabic literature. Thanks, Kim.
October 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM
New to me. David Larsen's (of _Names of the Lion_ and _The Book of Rain_, both out of Wave Books) translation blog. Arabic literature. Thanks, Kim.
At work, skimming Emerson’s Journals and listening to recordings of Dylan’s radio show. (He calls, approvingly, Sly Stone’s 1971 album “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,“ compared to early Sly, “a much darker record, cynical, the sound of milk going sour, a weary, skeptical record.”)
October 17, 2025 at 3:29 PM
At work, skimming Emerson’s Journals and listening to recordings of Dylan’s radio show. (He calls, approvingly, Sly Stone’s 1971 album “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,“ compared to early Sly, “a much darker record, cynical, the sound of milk going sour, a weary, skeptical record.”)
Out of Kent Johnson’s _I Once Met: A Partial Memoir of the Poetry Field_ (Longhouse, 2015).
October 15, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Out of Kent Johnson’s _I Once Met: A Partial Memoir of the Poetry Field_ (Longhouse, 2015).