Krishna & I took one of our kids up to summer camp in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Tuesday & rather than drive close to five hours back, we headed over to a B&B along the Delaware Water Gap, a genteel-but-funky place on 162 acres of land. There was only one other couple staying there that night, whom we didn’t see until breakfast the next morning when they came over from their cabin on the far side of a little lake. We all got to talking & after this went on for awhile, I headed back upstairs to clear out our room. While I was thus engaged, Krishna mentioned that I’d been up since 4:30 writing poetry. “Oh,” sez the fellow, “my brother-in-law is a poet. Did you ever hear of Clayton Eshleman?” And that, in turn, led to a seriously long conversation.

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When I got back home late Wednesday, there were literally hundreds of emails waiting, one of which, from Kent Johnson, informed me of Dmitri Prigov’s death. There is something completely unsettling in the death of someone whom you think of as being “your own age,” as I do Prigov. In typing up that minuscule note for the blog below, I saved the file to the wrong name & thereby wiped out about three pages of links I’d plan to run today. If I had one that was important to you, please remind me & I’ll try to fit it in over the weekend.