IS THERE ANYBODY REALLY ALIVE!?!

mm-- sing it bruce. i love new jersey. i do. listen to darkness on the edge of town by bruce springsteen and try to tell me it's not the most genuine thing you've ever heard. the state feels alive to me. it has a voice. lacking in pretense and brimming in all things quintessential when it comes to your most romantic idea of america, jersey is the place 4 me.

come on, tell me you don't want to get some burgers on that grill and hang with my tikki torches. (hi dad!)

it wasn't until i moved to new jersey that i started writing poetry. i'm not sure why, but new jersey definitely unlocked something in me that led to poetry. a lot of poets are from new jersey. it's one of the most poetic states around. allow me to explain. 

walt whitan! uncle walt! you can go visit his grave in camden, if you're into that kind of thing (i'm not.)

william carlos williams from rutherford

allen ginsberg fucked a latin teacher from my high school. no really.

amiri baraka born and raised in newark. nj poet laureate until there was some, uh, unpleasantness. 

w.s. merwin raised in union city, nj. graduated from princeton.

robert pinksy born in long branch, undergrad at rutgers newark

joyce carol oates wrote about the smell of nj. nice. 

there's a lot more i'm just going to leave out, but look into jersey poets. for those of you interested, i highly recommend this anthology: poets of new jersey.

my copy is in the mail!

please enjoy some words on nj:

"new jersey's gift to its poets... is that it's a place of many places, essentially amorphous, freeing us to look at the world." - stephen dunn

Night Driving

by joyce carol oates

South into Jersey on I-95 rain and

windshield wipers and someone you love asleep

in the seat beside you, light on all sides

like teeth winking and that smell like baking

bread gone wrong and you want 

to die it's so beautiful-

you love the enormous trucks floating in spray

and the tall smokestacks rimmed with flame

and this hammering in your head

this magnet drawing what's deepest

in you you can't name

exactly to know it's there.

<3