I’m delighted to announce that Under the Poppy will be published next year by Small Beer Press, the perfect literary theatre for its louche and loving shadow-show.

More details as they happen . . .

Doesn’t this look fantastic: “A Night with Walt Whitman,” with special guest Federico Garcia Lorca.  If my NYC sojourn was longer I’d be in line already.

Returning to the text is an adventure, especially when a book is “done.”  The thrill and exhaustion of making the thing is its own weather and atmosphere; coming to it later, as I’ve been doing for the stage event, is another thing; like being simultaneously inside and outside a construction you know inside and out (or suppose you do)? Like peeking into the windows of your own house…Anyway it’s fun to re-see, and imagine it variously through different lenses, for different kinds of viewers.  A labyrinth made of mirrors, sweets, broken glass, and puppet strings.

There was a lot of music floating around during the composition of the Poppy (still is), and Erik Satie was one of the constants. A piano in an empty theatre; black scuff marks on the weary wood; the snow just beginning to fall outside.