Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast ME READING STUFF

"He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity." ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"I'm ready to take over the airwaves." ~Me, The Great Delusion

LINKS
+Josh Garvelink's SUBSTACK and INSTAGRAM
+My SHOP
+My WEBSITE
+My INSTAGRAM

+My SUBSTACK

Thank you to anyone reading this. I so appreciate you. And I hope you're having a great day with good food that isn't hurting your stomach.

Thanking Mediocre Nurses, A Play by Robyn O'Neil

ACT 1: Transparency about a failing enterprise
ACT 2: Two questions and an answer
ACT 3: Keep Dying, Keep Writing it Down
ACT 4: Get Quiet

LINKS
+Buy C.K. Williams' Writers Writing Dying
+Buy The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus
+My SHOP
+My WEBSITE
+My INSTAGRAM

+My SUBSTACK

“We are amazing beings. We are neighbors of fire.” - Anne Carson

Continuing to reread from some of ME READING STUFF's top rated books/writers, we celebrate living legend Anne Carson and Autobiography of Red, yet again. This is the 20th episode dedicated to Anne Carson, and it certainly won't be the last.

Other topics include: hot dogs, stuffers, vacuuming, and my "nine months in Colombia".

With love, Robyn

LINKS

+Buy Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
+Watch Anne Carson's "Lecture on the History of Skywriting"
+My SHOP
+My WEBSITE
+My INSTAGRAM

+My SUBSTACK

This week, we return to everyone's favorite poetry book, Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion: The Poetry of Sportstalk by Pasha Malla and Jeff Parker.

In Metta World Peace's poem, he discusses the difference between elbow and shell pasta.

Anna Kournikova's poem talks about how many boyfriends she’s gonna kiss. 

And we end with an impromptu reading of the lyrics of superstar and friend to the show Cécile McLorin Salvant ❤️

Sending you all love this week!
Robyn

LINKS

Buy Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion: The Poetry of Sportstalk
My SHOP
My WEBSITE

My INSTAGRAM

My SUBSTACK

🎙️ The 11th Anniversary of ME READING STUFF 🎂

Dear listener,

Well, we've officially been kicking it for ELEVEN YEARS. Through vasectomies, divorce, mystery illnesses, breakdowns, fevers, estrangement, Covid, moves, near-death experiences, remarriage, Las Vegas hotel rooms, heart surgeries, parenthood, hauntings, and meetings with the ©️Kleenex company.

Think of how much water we've drunk since 2015. I wonder how many books we threw across the room? Who remembers when Channing Tatum wrote us erotic poetry? And what the hell was "Robyn's Gate"?

To celebrate this anniversary, I’m reading you the very same poem I read in the very first episode — Wallace Stevens’ “The Man on the Dump.” I also respond to your questions in "Answer Corner."

Whether you’ve been listening since 2015 or this is your first time — I’m really glad you’re here. And honestly? I'm really glad I'm still here, too.

Let's keep doing this. I'll see you next time.

You doing more than enough. (But maybe make a dentist appointment. And organize your nightstand. And drink more water.)

With so much love and appreciation,
Robyn

LINKS:

Buy The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
My WEBSITE
My INSTAGRAM
My SHOP
My Substack

This week marks the return to THROWING BOOKS ACROSS THE ROOM!!!! So exciting.
Dionne Brand's "Islands Vanish" really had me feeling all sorts of things. It was a pleasure to read it to you. 

I extend appreciation to her for "hunting for slave castles with a pencil for explosives." Not many hunt so rigorously. It's shattering.

This episode also includes an impassioned Recommendation Corner, a Mini Question Corner, and I talk about a steakhouse for an awfully long time. I did it all for the caperberries. 

Thank you, as always, for listening.
xoxo, Robyn

LINKS

• Buy Dionne Brand's NOMENCLATURE
• Check out my Youtube
• My Instagram
• My Substack
• My Website
• My Shop
• The Finch App
• Rituals Incense 
• Better Booch

This week, I read to you from a 1992 poetry anthology called The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade. Wendell Berry's poem "Ripening" leads to a discussion about death and altar-building. I also kick a few people out of the podcast 😲, and bemoan my exhaustion levels.

Thank you for listening - I love you guys❣️

LINKS:

Buy The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

Check out my new Website!

Follow me on Instagram!

"I know how furiously your heart is beating." ~Wallace Stevens, The Gray Room

"The tense American nerve relaxed. I lived
with a gray quietness that let the mind
grow inward like a root." ~Paul Engle

LINKS:
Taschen's The Book of Symbols 
My Website
My Shop
My Substack
My Instagram 

On today's episode, I read from a MASSIVE birthday gift, A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker (1925 – 2025), Edited by Kevin Young. The readings are: 

1. Charles Simic's "This Morning"
2. Anne Carson's "Epithalamium NYC"

LINKS

Buy A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker 

MY NEW WEBSITE

Check out my friend Jack's website!

My Instagram

My Substack

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.” ~Charles Simic 

"I love to walk but I can't
I love to swim but I can't
I love to sit in the sun but I can't
I love to smell the flowers but I can't
I love to play tennis but I can't
I love to water-ski but I can't"
~Andy Warhol

"Lime flavored sparkling waters taste like Fruity Pebbles." ~Me

LINKS:
Buy The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
Check out my Instagram
Check out my Substack
Check out my Website (FINALLY updating MAY 15TH!)

I love you guys! Thanks for listening. xoxo, Robyn

"I enjoy people best if I can be alone much of the time." – Octavia Butler

"Talk is a privilege and one must deny oneself that privilege." – Martha Graham

"I love saying "refrigerator."" – Me

LINKS

Pick up Mason Currey's Daily Ritual Books

Follow Mason Currey's Substack

Follow me on Instagram

Buy my book 20 YEARS OF DRAWINGS

Follow Anne J. Regan on Instagram

The BIG Eastfork Mug I bought myself.

"Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who's looking for something so huge, something they've wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them." ~Laurie Anderson

"Do you clean yourself well?" ~Me

LINKS:

Listen/Watch Laurie Anderson's O Superman

My new Substack Post

My newsletter signup at the bottom of MY WEBSITE.

My FIRST COMIC!

My INSTAGRAM

The trailer for Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine.

Today's anonymous poem was found in my library book about Medieval Art and was dated Feb 7, 1958! How exciting is that?!?

I also answer some listener questions & ask you some of my own in everyone's favorite segment - Question Corner.

I wish you well, I hope you can gain acceptance of disappointment, and we shall find peace.
With love, Robby

LINKS:

My Instagram

My Youtube 

Today, I explain how I use my fists to understand the days in a month. I regret (again) not learning Greek or its myths. We read Fuyue Anzai, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. We celebrate taking walks, aggressively. And something about Doritos.

LINKS:

Buy The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem HERE.

Buy Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass HERE.

Check out BLURRING BOOKS!

Watch the Walt Whitman scene in Now, Voyager HERE.

"I am one who does not think that the Earth was made for us. I think that we are first to last strangers on it, and that it takes us a good first half of our lives just to get used to gravity. That it's not easy." -Michael Silverblatt 

LINKS:

Visit the Bookworm ARCHIVES.

Buy David Markson books on INDIEBOUND.

Watch Michael Silverblatt at Cornell HERE.

Listen to David Markson on Bookworm. 

"I think mostly about clothes, sex, food, and seasonal variations. I have done so much to be ordinary and made a record of this: first I was born, next I was a child, then I learned things and did things and loved and had those who loved me and often felt alone. My body was sometimes well, then sometimes unwell. I got nearer to death, as did you." -Anne Boyer, Garments Against Women

"I think mostly about my health, food, the past, and sweatpants. Although I complain often and suffer from depression, my general demeanor is actually quite positive. I wish I liked hot tea and stillness more than I do." -Me 

LINKS:

Buy Anne Boyer's Garments Against Women

Me on Instagram

Me on Substack

"Twisting it in the right hand - I love another." via The Public Domain Review

"Donna Logan felt badly for her younger sister, Katie, ,who was suffering from acne."  via The Bold and the Beautiful: 10th Anniversary Celebration

LINKS

Visit The Public Domain Review

Watch The Bold and the Beautiful

My Instagram

My Substack

Join Grig's Poetry Party

Listen/Watch to Anne Carson's Lecture on Corners.

Tonight, we have a Recommendation Corner (it's been a while!), a return to Vasko Popa, praise for Valentine's Day whether you like it or not, and some new sound clips 🖤
And I'll miss you forever, Billy. I'm devestated.
Love, Robyn

p.s. can you believe I'm back for a 3rd week in a row? I can't!

LINKS

Buy Vasko Popa's Complete Works

My Instagram

My Substack

My Website

If you grew up in the 70s and 80s like me, you certainly know Geri Jewell. If you don't know the full breadth of her career, you will for sure know "Cousin Geri", Blair Warner's comedian cousin with cerebral palsy from The Facts of Life. I have adored her from the first moment I saw her on TV, and recently read her 2011 autobiography I'm Walking as Straight as I Can: Transcending Disability in Hollywood and Beyond. In this episode, I read to you a small excerpt from a story she wrote involving a nun, some urine, and a car wash. ENJOY!  xoxo, Robyn

LINKS:

Buy Geri Jewell's book I'm Walking as Straight as I Can: Transcending Disability in Hollywood and Beyond!

See Geri on Sesame Street HERE and HERE (with an appearance by Northern Calloway, who I told you about on THIS episode of ME READING STUFF). (and there are many more if you just search Youtube)

Geri's character dancing on Deadwood.

Geri Jewell's website.

Me on Substack

Me on Instagram

www.robynoneil.com

Today, we head back to Encyclopedia Corner, exploring the letter "A". Also discussed: The Prinzhorn Collection, Jean Dubuffet, Hypergraphia, Emma Hauck, Ants, Animals, The San Fernando Valley, Cardiology, and Cockroaches, Nudity, and Adoption. 

LINKS:

My Substack

My Instagram

"My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They're just horizontal lines." - Agnes Martin

"Oh really, bitch? I don't think so!" - My Body

LINKS:

Learn more about artist Agnes Martin HERE.

Buy "On Beauty" by Agnes Martin through PACE.

Buy "Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words" on INDIEBOUND. 

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." - Vladimir Nabokov

"I love ruled paper." - Me

LINKS:

Buy The Best American Essays of The Century

Buy Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder

Learn more about my drawing HELL

See James Ensor in front of Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 as an old man. 

Dear You,

We last spoke in January and I've missed you; I've missed this. A lot has happened. A lot has not. Let's pick back up where we left off, but let's make it better and more loving this time. Let's not let the hoards of negatives overshadow the rest — the ever-present glimmerings of light. I simply can't anymore. I woke up different after that night. I even had pink cheeks for the first time in ages, according to some!

"Such fun to wake up though!
Such fun too if you don't!" - C.K. Williams

All my love,
Robyn

LINKS:

Buy C.K. Williams "Writers Writing Dying" at INDIEBOUND.

Damien Jurado's INSTAGRAM

My INSTAGRAM

Our MEAL TRAIN ❤️🌮❤️ if you're so inclined.

Listen to every episode of ME READING STUFF on my YOUTUBE PAGE.

"Keep dying! Keep writing it down!"

"It is certainly true that the larger and older the living thing is, the harder it is to know how to care for it." - Lydia Davis

"I barely know what a uterus is for God's sake." - Me

LINKS:

Buy "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis" HERE.

Become a Subscriber on My Substack!

Become a Paid Subscriber and get a drawing!

My Instagram

My Website

My Youtube

"Help! I'm David from Sesame Street, and they're trying to kill me!" - Northern Calloway

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." - Zora Neale Hurston
LINKS:

The Wikipedia article on Northern Calloway

My Substack

Damien Jurado's record label - Maraqopa

Praying for apathy, deciding towards easy.
Love, Robyn

LINKS:

Buy Joshua Rivkin's Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly

Here is my SUBSTACK!

Here is my website.

The Cy Twombly Gallery

Robert Rauschenberg

Jasper Johns

Henry Darger

"The people who have made me feel the worst were always my best friends." -Detective Olivia Benson

"I'll never sell 14 million like Hammer, I just wanna do a good Ice-T show." - Ice-T

LINKS:

Get your drawing! Subscribe to my Substack

Watch the Driver 23 / Atlas Moth Trailer

Watch the Fitzcarraldo Trailer

The NBC article on Steve Zirnkilton

Listen to the Steve Zirnkilton Law & Order SVU Intro

Buy Nedra Glover Tawwab's Set Boundaries, Find Peace book.

Damien Jurado's The Loneliest Place and Male Customer #1

Dear Boss, 
I am sick.
Love, Robyn

A - ABLE-MINDED
B - BICUSPID
C - CROSS-EXAMINATION
 
K - Keeping You Company

With love, Robyn

LINKS:

Well, I've never linked to Amazon for books, but that seems to be the only place I see Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy, so head over there to buy it! There's also a set of several of his books on there that look really great, so maybe do that!

My Subtack

MY Shop

LINKS:

My Substack

Buy my book HERE.

Watch American Movie HERE. 

"Lighting ranks as the most important factor in seeing."
"Writing letters helps bring friends closer together."
"Plans for lightning should provide the greatest possible light needed for any task."
"Be sure than every statement you make is correct."
"A bolt of lightning can kill a person or start a forest fire."

-All quotes from 1964's World Book Encyclopedia - "L"

LINKS

My Substack

Subterranean Thunder AKA Angela Lane

My Website

The Lightning Field by Walter De Maria

"I must decline, for secret reasons." ~E.B. White

LINKS:

My Substack

See Letters of Note on Instagram

ME READING STUFF shirts at the bottom of THIS page.

California Scrub Jay

Stellar's Jay

"A trotting animal can restore red hearts to red." - Anne Carson (Short Talk on My Task)

LINKS:

Buy Anne Carson's Short Talks

Listen to Anne Carson's reading on "Shade"
(it's at the 19 minute mark, but you should listen to the entire thing)

Listen to me reading her writing on Shade from years ago.

Buy my Book on my website.

And if you're a pickle guy, like me, here are BRITT'S and BEST MAID!

"In the end I would rather wonder than know." -Mary Ruefle

LINKS:

Follow me on Substack: https://robynoneil.substack.com/

Buy "Madness, Rack, and Honey"

"Red" read by Mary Ruefle herself! 

Buy "I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare"

D'Agata writes in the introduction to The Making of the American Essay: "The world provides non-fiction, and humans provide the rest." My own work has been dealing endlessly with the problems humans incessantly seem to provide. In desperation, I now pray that for the rest of my days, my eyes can shift their focus to the innumerable glories & ongoing wisdom humans also deliver.

LINKS:

My new Substack!

Buy John D'Agata's "The Making of the American Essay" HERE.

Learn more about John D'Agata.

Read from A New History of the Essay.

Listen to Michael Silverblatt's interview with D'Agata on Bookworm.

"'I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it." - Werner Herzog 

"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they're doing." - Dale Carnegie 

"People rarely have fun in what they're doing unless they succeed." - Me

"….ENJOY your mothafuckin' YOUTH....

while you GOT IT.

Whatever the fuck you trynna do in yo DREAMS and shit…….
DO IT RIGHT

THE FUCK

NOW.

...while yo body is still witchu….

cause the rest of us would tell you this gettin old shit is

FO THE BIRDS!

That shit DO NOT not let off...

Once it’s on yo ass, 

THAT’S IT!!!" - Katt Williams 

LINKS:

Buy "The Lost Writings" by Franz Kafka (From New Directions aka Nude Erections)

Enjoy Your Youth by Katt Williams (a clip)

French Fry Hustlin' by Katt Williams

The Henry Miller Memorial Library

XOXO, RO

Tonight, I give you a reading from New Directions' Love Poems of Catullus 
and a reiteration of my preference for the CH Sissen translation of Catullus 85.

Art event or not, put it all on a Carr's Table Water Cracker.

And if you have an interest in words, take 2 minutes to try this podcast out: Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day.

Thank you guys for listening, loving, hating. Always.
 
xo, Robyn

An After Dark Episode! 

Tonight I read from Emily Dickinson's Final Harvest: https://bookshop.org/p/books/final-harvest-poems-emily-dickinson/110106?ean=9780316184151

I explain how this book by Alex Soojung Kim Pang both solved my life & ignited a nervous breakdown the size of Pangaea: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alex-soojung-kim-pang/rest/9781541617162/?lens=basic-books

Other things: John Green's new(ish) book of essays, Sap Moss, Dr. Jackie from Married to Medicine, The Virgin Spring, Leaving Las Vegas, The Elephant Man, and Au Hazard Balthazar.

So good to talk with you guys again.

Much love and apologies forever,
Robyn

"Go inside a stone.

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove."

-Charles Simic

Buy absolutely anything by Charles Simic.

Buy "The Language of Letting Go" Daily Meditations by Melody Beattie.

And thank you for being with me today. I've missed you guys. 

Love, Robyn

"We're animals, Amy. And some animals like to party. For me, God is a beer on the beach. Maybe that's fucked up, but at least it's honest." - Levi, Enlightened

"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships." - Charles Simic

"Today wasn't anything spectacular and that's what I loved about it." Me, January 2, 2023

LINKS:

Watch "Enlightened" on HBO HERE.

Charles Simic's Obituary.

My website: www.robynoneil.com

MY SHOP

"Modern natural philosophers have found God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros." - Voltaire

"I found the saltiest, greasiest corn chip at the bottom of this Juanita's bag this morning. It totally blew my mind." - Me

LINKS:

Buy the book here: https://www.ndbooks.com/book/an-elemental-thing/

See what you think about these Daniel Ladinsky "HAFIZ" books: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/6/14/fake-hafez-how-a-supreme-persian-poet-of-love-was-erased

And please meet Rajiv Surendra AKA Kevin Gnapoor!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uo2nomf4I0

Checking in after a long illness. Can't wait to start talking with you guys again!

LINKS:

Send your questions/comments/concerns to: info@robynoneil.com

My website: www.robynoneil.com

Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robyn_oneil/?hl=en

"We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries." - Dire Straits

"I love turkey sandwiches." - Me

LINKS:

Check out the Dire Straits video for "Money For Nothing" HERE!

See Damien Jurado's website for tickets to his upcoming 25th anniversary show.

My #1 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1d1eobg9QY

My #2 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-SEQrHvd2o

My #3 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kGUJOnuY4

My #4 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNHTmqAny3U

My #5 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcqTZ7P_IKQ

My #6 Favorite Damien live video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14pegmYlozI

Send your questions to: info@robynoneil.com

My website: www.robynoneil.com

Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robyn_oneil/?hl=en

"It is always tricky, the question whether to read an author’s work in light of his life or not." -Anne Carson

"If you can drink a beer, you can smell patchouli." - Me

LINKS:

Check out "The Albertine Workout" by Anne Carson HERE and buy it at your nearest independent bookseller.

Listen to Anne Carson reading from "The Albertine Workout" HERE.

SMELL LINKS:

Zum Laundry Soap

Zum Bar Soap

Pacha Soap

Mr. Coffee Mug Warmer

Aveda Sắp Moss

LUSH Karma

The Smell of the Water Turning

Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille

Aesop Resurrection

Aesop Reverence
__________________________________

See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.

Watch the videos about my work HERE.

Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")

And here's my WEBSITE. 

Thank you so much for listening. 

"I was most happy when pen and paper were taken from me and I was forbidden from doing anything. I had no anxiety about doing nothing by my own fault, my conscience was clear, and I was happy. This was when I was in prison." - Daniil Kharms

"I'm exhausted." - Me

LINKS:

Buy "Today I Wrote Nothing" HERE (or wherever you buy books except Amazon).

Buy a ME READING STUFF slut shirt or hoodie HERE!

See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.

Watch the videos about my work HERE.

Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")

And here's my WEBSITE. 

Thank you so much for listening. 

“I think I want, but what is it that I want?
Do I want something? I don’t know." - Patrizia Cavalli

"Kids tend to think of my violence as funny." - Me

LINKS:

Buy Patrizia Cavalli's "My Poems Won't Change the World" HERE.

Check out my American Movie podcast HERE.

Buy a "ME READING STUFF" shirt or sweatshirt HERE.

See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.

Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")

And here's my WEBSITE. 

Thank you so much for listening. 

"You hear so much talk about risk-taking in poetry. Lying is a form of risk-taking, but no one talks about that." - Mary Ruefle

"The End." - Me
______________________________________________

LINKS:

Buy Madness, Rack, and Honey at WAVE BOOKS.

Buy a "ME READING STUFF" shirt or sweatshirt HERE.

See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.

Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")

And here's my WEBSITE. 

Thank you so much for listening. 

"We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole." - Mark Strand

"Have you guys seen the new squeezable sauerkraut?!?" - Me

LINKS:

Purchase Mark Strand's "Selected Poems" HERE.

Check out my Artforum review!

Buy a "ME READING STUFF" shirt or sweatshirt HERE.

See my drawings in "HELL and the Paradisal" HERE.

Get free shipping on all books in my SHOP! (use Coupon Code "BOOK")

Check out Easton's Books in Mount Vernon, Washington HERE.

Learn more about The Trevor Project!

And here's my WEBSITE. 

"Such fun waking up though! Such fun too if you don't! Keep dying! Keep writing it down!" - C.K. Williams

"Message received." - Me

LINKS:

Buy "Writers Writing Dying" by C.K. Williams HERE.

Buy "Rest" by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang HERE.

Sign up for my newsletter HERE.

Check out my show at Inman Gallery HERE. 

"Jeff, roommate: Left my stuff all over the house; left the fridge a mess.
Mary, friend: Promised to make her a clock. Made it, but never gave it to her." -Workaholics Anonymous

"Monica, Starbucks boss: Pretended I got a "gig" in Hollywood to be killed off in a horror movie. Never returned to job.
Peter, Gallery Owner: Lied during a studio visit about how long I'd lived in California for no reason at all. I added ten years to the actual total."  - Me

LINKS:

Purchase any of the Workaholics Anonymous. books mentioned in this episode on the WORKAHOLICS ANONYMOUS WEBSITE.

Visit my website HERE.

Visit my shop HERE.