Tonight I’ll read “The Widower,” my own unfinished novel about the American poet Hart Crane. It is narrated by an imagined character who purports to have been Hart Crane’s lover in the months just before Crane’s death in 1932. So I invite you now to lie down and close your eyes, calm yourself down, relax completely, and let yourself by taken off to sleep: literate sleep.

Tonight I’ll read an excerpt from the late John Ashbery’s book-length poem FLOW CHART, one of the great monuments of late-20th-century poetry. If you’re unfamiliar with Ashery’s poem, you’re in for a unique experience. It will certainly not bore you, but it might exhaust you with its unrelenting expression so that before long you’ll want to be lying down so you can close your eyes, calm yourself down, relax completely, and let yourself by taken off to sleep: literate sleep.

Tonight I’ll read (with the author's permission) the first part of Cheryl Mendelson’s “Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House” published in 1999. I had heard long ago that “Home Comforts” was the only modern literary book about housekeeping that was not only useful but beautiful. Friends urged me to read it. I’m ashamed to say that I did not, until recently. Now, at last, I am a devotee of this remarkable (and, at nearly 900 pages, remarkably long) book. Tonight, I’ll start by reading the introductory essay. I’ll read some other chapters later. Now, as I read from THE American book on housekeeping, I invite you to lie down and close your eyes, calm yourself down, relax completely, and instead of cleaning your bathroom or kitchen, let yourself be taken away to sleep: Literate Sleep.