In reviewing a collection of Morton Feldman's writing, Richard Kostelanetz laments that the book "fails to reproduce Feldman's monumental jokes. The strongest one in my head recalls his having dinner with the over-inflated German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen on 57th Street. When Stockhausen suggests that 'Germans and Jews are very much alike,' Feldman replies, 'Yes, there's nothing I'd rather do more than put three million Germans in concentration camps.'"

--The Brooklyn Rail (October 2006)

From My Life

2.

My doctor and I have been playing a little game of telephone tag today. He's been trying to let me know that I'm going to be dying sooner than previously planned, this even after selling me an extended warranty only last year. I've managed to be out when he calls--you know, moving the car to get out of the way of street-cleaners and, of course, to avoid being ticketed and/or towed. When I get back to the apartment, there's another message from him on the machine, but it only says to call him, and that there's something "troubling" in my recent bloodwork. I put off calling him for a few days, and then, as always when I do call, he's either with a patient or not in the office or both. I leave my number with the re (de?) ceptionist and then leave the phone off the hook just in case he calls back before I have a chance to go out.

Poems from the Book of Nanoseconds, #41

establishing a certain ritual
a perfunctory formality
a woman, however elderly