noah

@leonardcrohn

bookstore guy in the hudson valley. … Farewell happy fields / Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail / Infernal world …

806 Folgt402 Follower409 Posts

Bluesky

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noah@leonardcrohn· 2d

9. Dyke (geology) by Sabrina Imbler the best kinds of metaphors are the ones that aren’t perfect. this book holds a number of different things up in the air to see how the light shines over and through them #sealeychallenge

noah@leonardcrohn· 3d

8. American Primitive by Mary Oliver figured a trip to the Cape was the right moment for my favorite person’s favorite poet #sealeychallenge

* THE FISH
The first fish I ever caught would not lie down quiet in the pail but flailed and sucked at the burning amazement of the air and died
in the slow pouring off of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated the flesh from the bones and ate him. Now the sea is in me: I am the fish, the fish glitters in me; we are risen, tangled together, certain to fall back to the sea. Out of pain, and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.
tons is

HUMPBACKS
There is, all around us, this country of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else we would fly away.
Off Stellwagen off the Cape,
the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it like children at play.
They sing, too.
And not for any reason you can't imagine.

Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat, then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly they smash through the surface, someone begins shouting for joy and you realize it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time how huge they are, as they breach, and dive, and breach again through the shining blue flowers of the split water and you see them for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky - like nothing you've ever imagined - like the myth of the fifth morning galloping out of darkness, pouring heavenward, spinning; then
they crash back under those black silks and we all fall back together into that wet fire, you know what I mean.

I know a captain who has seen them playing with seaweed, swimming through the green islands, tossing the slippery branches into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever she can, and nudge it gently along the bow with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.
Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones toss their dark mane and hurry back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything, even the great whale, throbs with song.

noah@leonardcrohn· 4d

7. Wild Iris by Louise Glück I’m a day behind but that’s okay! What a strange book, a conversation between a gardener poet, her plants, and her God. I want to hold it next to Pure Colour and see how they resonate off each other #sealeychallenge

VESPERS
In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold the heavy rains, the cold nights that come so often here, while other regions get twelve weeks of summer. All this belongs to you: on the other hand, I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots Like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing, you may not know how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in carly darkness: I am responsible for these vines.

noah@leonardcrohn· 6d

6. Poemas y antipoemas / Poems and Antipoems by Nicanor Parra, tr. by many I don’t know how I first heard of Parra, but I remember looking for him in every bookstore in SF. I found this one at the used bookstore in Provincetown. Levertov as one of the translators, all these little threads bt books

And yet the world has always been like this.
Truth, like beauty, is neither created nor lost
And poetry is in things themselves or is merely a mirage of the spirit.
I admit that a well-planned earthquake
Can wipe out a city rich in traditions in a matter of seconds, And that a meticulous aerial bombardment Smashes trees, horses, thrones, music,
But what does it matter
If, while the world's greatest ballerina
Is dying, poor and abandoned, in a village in southern France, Spring restores to man a few of the vanished flowers.
What I say is, let's try to be happy, sucking on the miserable human rib.
Let's extract from it the restorative liquid, Each one following his personal inclinations.
Let's cling to this divine table scrap!
Panting and trembling,
Let's suck those maddening lips.
The lot is cast.
Let's breathe in this enervating and destructive perfume And for one more day live the life of the elect.

Translators
Fernando Alegría
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Allen Ginsberg
James Laughlin
Denise Levertov
Thomas Merton
W. S. Merwin
Patricia Rachal
Miller Williams
William Carlos Williams

bonus: the sick baseball cap I got at the conference, which says “Nd 90”

noah@leonardcrohn· 7d

5. Evening Train by Denise Levertov read on the evening train home from the bookseller conference. lots of talk about golden light that pairs very nicely with a sunset on the Hudson. also I totally forgot this was a signed copy! #sealeychallenge

the titular poem from Evening Train, photographed on a train in the evening

noah@leonardcrohn· 9d

4. Customs by Solmaz Sharif LOOK blew my mind when it came out, and CUSTOMS is also revelatory. One of those books that teaches you how to read it, a good argument for the collection as integral unit #sealeychallenge

noah@leonardcrohn· 10d

2. With My Back to the World by Victoria Chang because Jen Bervin opened with an Agnes Martin epigraph, I thought I’d follow the line (fitting) to Victoria Chang’s Agnes book. exciting cameos from On Kawara, Cy Twombly, and my favorite room at SFMOMA, even as VC and I see them differently.

noah@leonardcrohn· 12d

1. Silk Poems by Jen Bervin a string of words spoken in the voice of a silkworm, literally etched in gold on a strand of liquid silk. diaphanous even down to the beautiful paper on which it’s printed #sealeychallenge

APRACTICE
ISNOTATHINGINITSELF
ITISAWAYTOBE
HAPPYANDCALMINLIFE

"The wiggle of a worm as important as the assassination of a president." —Agnes Martin

noah@leonardcrohn· 12d

attempting the #sealeychallenge this month. I’ll either fail spectacularly and immediately, or it will fix me

noah@leonardcrohn· Jun 25

this makes my blood boil every time I think about it

THE NEW REPUBLIC
As for the protesters in JVP and similar groups, Cohen was sharply dismissive.
"Most anti-Zionists are not going to be Jews in a generation," he predicted.
"The vast majority of these Jews don't speak any of the Jewish languages. They don't know the Jewish texts or live in Israel. And if they're going to have children, there's nearly a 50 percent chance they're not going to have them with Jews or raise them as Jews. For these Jews to oppose Zionism, for these Jews to have reserved for themselves as the final expression of their Jewishness the condemnation of Israel—I have to salute them, I might even bow down to them. That's ultimate chutzpah."

noah@leonardcrohn· Jun 3

you’re on our display!

A Pride display at a bookstore featuring many books, including Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky

noah@leonardcrohn· Apr 22

may he live another 80

A group of 6 booksellers with birthday boy John Waters in the children’s section of a bookstore. yours truly bottom left, JW has lost a lot less hair in the intervening decade than I have

noah@leonardcrohn· Mar 20

what in the striped pajamas is this shit

photo of a book titled “a Sunday at the pool in Kigali” by Gil Courtemanche

"The novel of the year" is what La Presse called this extraordinary book, a love story that takes place during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda-by one of French Canada's most admired journalists.
The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel is a magnet for a motley group of Kigali residents: aid workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, expatriates and prostitutes.
Among these patrons is the hotel waitress, Gentille, a beautiful Hutu often mistaken for a Tutsi, who has long been admired by Bernard Valcourt, a foreign journalist.

Author photo of Gil Courtemanche, a middle aged white quebecer, with the following bio: “PIERRE LONGTIN
Gil Courtemanche is a journalist specializing in international and Third World politics. His recent nonfiction works are Québec (1998) and Nouvelles douces colères
(1999). He lives in Montreal.”

noah@leonardcrohn· Feb 8

last year’s sticker was a pizza Statue of Liberty, the 10-year old who drew it came to the bookstore campaigning for it

noah@leonardcrohn· Jan 19

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality … Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

noah@leonardcrohn· Jan 17

@littlepuss.net & @twodollarradio.bsky.social y’all have a fan here at Inquiring Minds

noah@leonardcrohn· Jan 3

Martin MAUSer and Howard RATner… c’mon

screenshot of letterboxd review:

nmintz
Uncut Gems 2019
Rewatched Jan 2, 2026
Adam Sandler was 53 in this movie, which was set in 2012, so Howie was roughly 60, which means he was born in 1952... RIP Marty Supreme, Jr.:(

noah@leonardcrohn· Dec 22

if only there were a well-known and oft-cited line from Shakespeare to express this sentiment

2-star letterboxd review of Hamnet: “Has all the trappings of profundity, but ultimately not much of anything to say”

noah@leonardcrohn· Dec 3

definitely should not have commuted in a blizzard but at least it was cozy at the store

Interior of a bookstore with the lights off, snowlight coming in

Snowy village street corner as seen from under the bookstore awning

noah@leonardcrohn· Dec 2

idk man, must we?

Screenshot from the New York Times Top 10 books of 2025 list

Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux

Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux
In the annals of art history, bad boy artists are legion, and the 19th-century French painter Gauguin often figures near the top of the list — denounced as a colonizer who seduced underage Tahitian girls and spread syphilis in the South Seas. Prideaux's enthralling biography, studded with keen close readings of her subject's innovative art, chips away at this caricature, fashioning in its stead a slyly witty portrait of an original and contradictory man who experienced extreme wealth and abject poverty, who abandoned his wife, children and country in pursuit of his singular artistic vision, and who fought for the interests of his Polynesian neighbors against the colonial authorities even as he took in several of their daughters as child brides.

noah@leonardcrohn· Nov 16

pope bob holding up the maglia rosa in front of the peloton

noah@leonardcrohn· Nov 5

humanities scholars today

Jim Downey podcast meme with text “Mahmood Mamdani’s kid?”

noah@leonardcrohn· Oct 25

forgot to post this

Eric Andre wearing a long-sleeved Face/Off t-shirt, standing in a bookstore, holding a copy of Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davis, and grinning

noah@leonardcrohn· Oct 9

taped this to the register and sharing the quoted post with the staff so everyone is prepared

“Krasznahorkai” written in capital letters and taped to the drawer of a cash register

noah@leonardcrohn· Oct 5

yesterday a customer came up to the counter with this book and I said “it *is* such a con,” and he said “yeah, it is. and I work in AI…”

The AI Con: how to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want, by Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna

noah@leonardcrohn· Aug 17

You have been blessed by Bug the Dog. Bug the Dog brings fair tidings and good fortune to all! One like = good luck for one day. One repost equals = luck for a whole year (that’s seven dog years)!!! DM Bug the Dog to your crush, if they reply it means they like you back!!!!!

red and white pit bull mix with big ears smiling in the back seat of a car

noah@leonardcrohn· Aug 14

🌈

red and white dog on a backyard patio with a rainbow behind her

noah@leonardcrohn· Aug 7

hey quick question, what the fuck

LOVE by Hanne Ørstavik, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken

noah@leonardcrohn· Jul 23

we will brook no guillaume martin erasure

La Société du peloton by Guillaume Martin

noah@leonardcrohn· Jul 2

me af