The Typist
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Re-reading Hopscotch in the 21st Century
In Defense of the Kindle When I first read Hopscotch in mass-market paperback edition late in high school in the 1970s, I was taken by the combined celebration and critique of mid-20th century bohemia. I was drawn to it perhaps because I was also reading the Beats, and learning of the early folk scene in… Continue reading
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The Vast White Ring Conspiracy
<img alt=”A ring of men in white hoods standing around a fire holding torches.”> * Perhaps it’s wrong to reuse a title. When I first coined this on The Wet Bank Guide it was to taunt both then-mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin and the white ring that binds it. The phrase came back to… Continue reading
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The Form of Space
I must have forgotten if I ever knew how much more quickly the moon speeds across the firmament in the opposite direction of the slower stars. I was struck by the beauty of the thin crescent Moon with Venus perched a hand span above it the other night, almost perfectly centered to the crescent. And… Continue reading
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What’s Going On
I have been back and forth on Navarre NextDoor with a neighbor from Parkview about the Nolatoya Recall of mayor Latoya Cantrell in New Orleans. The current topic is Nolatoya’s suit to force a voter purge. Reviewing the roles is a necessary function that occurs, by Louisiana law, and must be completed by June 30… Continue reading
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Back in the Saddle Again
So this blog didn’t work out as I planned it just over a year ago. I captured some of my thoughts as I titrated off the anti-psychotic risperidone in hopes of overcoming the writing block that descended on me seven years ago. Like most anti-psychotics it was designed to make crazy people calm the fuck… Continue reading
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Age 13.
Headphones. Sticky Fingers. Dreaming not of Farrah Fawcett but of Nico and Marianne Faithful.“It’s just that evil life has got you in it’s sway.” This explains so much of the last 50 years. “Wild Horses… Continue reading
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I was cured, alright.
Last Friday night I drank one cocktail (a bit strong) and one dropper of my THC tincture. When I went to bed I was looking for something to read and opened John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, and it clicked for the first time in years. I wrote a half dozen lines, finished them the next… Continue reading
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Do Not Go Gently Into That Future
“Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, fields eroded, streams polluted & mountains overturned. Continue reading
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There is a bitter root
Somewhere in this house is (should be) a hardback first edition (foxed) City Lights pocketbook of the selected poems of Federico Garcia Lorca. I carried it to Spain and laid it on his desk in his home in town. My tour had to wait for the private visit of a famous bullfighter. And I had… Continue reading
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And now, for something completely different.
I just wrote what I think is a thoughtful, coherent political think piece of 691 words. It is the longest thing I have written in the last several years. And I have a lot more to say. The secret to returning to a life of writing is to start writing. So I am going to… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and minor poet in and from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped helped inspire Treme, and Toulouse Street, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His poetry and other writing has appeared in the New Laurel Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Rumpus and elsewhere.
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Well Bottom Blues 