“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” Kurt Vonnegut’s quote heralds the 10th annual PEN World Voices Festival in NYC, April 28-Mayy 4, over 150 writers from 30 nations, including too many luminaries to mention (Rushdie, Tracy K Smith, Tobin, Chomsky, to merely whet the appetite).

I had never heard of Solmaz Sharif till I read her riveting poem Look on the PEN website.

Live wire and poet extraordinaire Leah Umansky’s Mad Men collection is getting a lot of press: USA Today, Late Night Library.

This morning we walked around Pleasure Bay, on the south side of Boston Harbor. It’s one of those amazing places you find in seaside cities, where the ocean’s imminence and matching swath of sky meet urban skyline, massive jetliners coming and going from the airport a stone-skip across the water, the familiar silhouettes of port machinery and fishing piers. The wind was fierce till we rounded the shelter of Fort Independence. It was the first time in 2014 that I broke out sunglasses.

At last, too much light.