We all got up to leave, and immediately someone was reaching for Burroughs' coat, while someone else went for his hat. After one person had helped him put on his coat and another had given him his hat, he turned to me and said with a wry smile, "Around here, I'm known as 'The Don'."
It turned out that Ann and her husband Dan Becker, own Becker's Books, where dark, sturdy bookcases can be found along over 30 corridors of shelving. Ann said the operation currently has a stock of 250,000 or so titles of used books ready to go.
It's a crazy but credible universe Freese has created. Every story glistens with bitter truths, edgy truths about twisted human relationships, lack of love, the inexplicable lives we live. Each says maybe you haven't experienced life this way, but many others have–it is their truth and one day you might know what it means to live a shadow figure yourself.
Begnal's latest collection, Ancestor Worship, is a remarkable for its moody details. In "Beautiful People," "Dead bird blown down the road / as light as its feathers," is a dazzling, fitting inchoate for a poem that ends with the provocative line "the knife dripping with juice." Like Ginsberg, Begnal realizes a poem must provoke.
"When I think of sociologists who aspire to be writers, I think of W.E.B. DuBois, whose prose was quite good as we all know. But he was not a poet or a novelist. One day, I hope These Hands I Know will be recognized for what it is, an excellent primary source for people such as sociologists. The book gives a view to the effects of racism on black family life and the effects of child abuse."
"People I respect very much have liked the book. I sent two chapters to M.F.K. Fisher before she died, and she wrote me back a marvelous letter telling me she liked the writing very much. She said that she didn't like 99% of what had been written about Provence...'But Richard, you have broken the spell'."
She had skipped her biology lecture to let the man shave her legs and then have sex with her in the Jacuzzi tub. When he came, he bit down hard on her left shoulder, and afterward, she studied the indentations his teeth left in her skin while he dressed. Whether or not they were at his home, he always dressed as soon as they finished.
