Bunny and Free brings together two interrelated series of essays published initially on Substack in spring/summer 2026.  It is a seemingly desultory collection whose through-line may, at first, be hard to discern. There is, though, a strong emotional undertow that holds them all together. Or at least it felt that way to me writing them. The focal point of Bunny is V.R. “Bunny” Lang, a poet/playwright who came of age as an artist in the 1950s and died young, in 1955. She is best known as Frank O’Hara’s (of Lunch Poems fame) “muse,” with whom he shared both poems and lunches starting in the late 1940s until her untimely death. “Muse” is such a dismissive way to characterize her role in their relationship, which was deep and loving, she serving more often as his mentor than his inspiration. Theirs is a beautiful story of true friendship and mutual trust. The focal point of Free is the character who came to me in a “lucid” dream on the first anniversary of my wife’s death ten years ago, playing out a stunning morality tale that took me months to fully decode. He and that dream became the capstones for the first book I wrote from the shadow of that loss, This Fall, still my keystone book. Because I was discombobulated when I started all this, the self-revelatory aspect of the Bunny series left me very anxious, enough so that I actually unpublished three of the essays. When I reread them after I started Free, I couldn’t fathom what I was so unnerved about, and I re-published them. Here’s what I concluded: Last spring I was feeling vulnerable, unsafe, really, a state of mind that inclines me (as I assume it would anyone) to avoid sharing overly personal material that others might use to judge or criticize me. Now I am serene and confident again, back on my game, so can easily assume such a risk. That’s a lot to get from writing, which is the primary reason I do so much of it. No matter my discombobulation, hunky dory is usually waiting at the other end of the line, of all those lines I have to write to get there. I hope you will enjoy reading about my “trip.”

Bunny and Free  PDF