Literary Ancestry of this Blog

Yasunari Kawabata’s PALM-OF-THE-HAND STORIES
ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES
THE PILLOW BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON
Kafka’s shorter stories, such as A HUNGER ARTIST and FIRST SORROW
the poems of Jack Gilbert, for style
the poems of C. K. Williams, for substance
Pascal’s PENSEES
Robert Henri’s THE ART SPIRIT
the interchapters in Hemingway’s IN OUR TIME
Keizan, TRANSMISSION OF LIGHT
Stan Mack’s REAL LIFE FUNNIES (comic strip in the VILLAGE VOICE in the 1970s, all dialogue verbatim from life; matchless scene–reporting of that era; a book collection of it, published by Putnam in 1979, is currently #1,951,319 on amazon)
spoken witness at Quaker meetings
Chuang–tzu
Merton, THE WISDOM OF THE DESERT
Connect–the–dots art. I put in the dots, you connect them.