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Sara gives me The Unquiet Grave, the book Cyril Connolly wrote the year he turned forty, when he was struggling with the question of what he wanted out of life. I can give this to you, Sara says, laughing, because you’re not unhappy with your work. She means my writing. “Approaching forty, sense …

The poets gave away their own books, handbound sometimes, and letterpress broadsides made on antiquated machinery, they gave their time to editing each other’s work in their bedroom offices, they paid to have it printed, they carried each other’s books in suitcases to give to other poets, they used…

We’re driving through the mountains of France talking about affluence. Looking at the map this morning, John noticed that affluence is the French word for the tributaries of a river. He wonders if the word once suggested a great river of wealth flowing into smaller affluences. Was it comforting for…

I sip my tea, imagining rich people drowning in the very water I’m drinking, though most of the dead, I know, were third class. I think of the odd pleasure I took in that scene in the movie where water floods the ballroom and roils up the grand staircase. It was the pleasure of seeing wealth come t…

I look at it, canted dangerously with just a bit of hull still above water