Adrian Dallas Frandle
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adrianf.bsky.social
Adrian Dallas Frandle
@adrianf.bsky.social
1.3K followers 790 following 2.1K posts
Syntaxer. Poet. Editor. Columnist. Flash Reader for Split Lip Mag. Gaymer. Ex-chef. Occasional pebble. Feelings Laminated. MFA in Poetry (Randolph). Gay a/f.

words -> http://adriandallas.com
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adrianf.bsky.social
this book absolutely rips

(support your local library to find gems like this!)
book cover of THE VISUAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION A DOCUMENTED PICTORIAL CHECKLIST OF THE SE WORLD-CONCEPTS/THEMES/BOOKS/MAGS/COMICS/FILMS/TV/RADIO/ ART/FANDOM/CULIS/ PERSONAL COMMENTARIES BY THE GREATEST NAMES IN SF WRITING... EDITED BY BRIAN ASH it features a sci fi drawing a space ship in the shapes of vast A and Z. An open book with encyclopedia format, featuring various black and white and color entries under the heading “Time and Nth Dimensions”
January 28, 2026 at 2:26 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
James Tate
PER DIEM Spherically wondrous sunbeam dwelling in the mansion of the pine of chastity, today we bought an ice pack for Mildred's injured foot. Luminous shadow in the plumflower chamber, Edna quit her job yesterday, got drunk, stayed drunk, behaved like a defective monster collapsing in the mansion of self-pity. Meanwhile, the great sea of compassion rolled in, rolled out, rolled in. And the blue mountain of itself remains, and the blind shampooers never tire of their work.
January 27, 2026 at 4:27 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Lauren Berlant & Kathleen Stewart, from “The Hundreds”

#smallpoemsunday
cc: @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Space Junk Things cross your path like the fireflies you once dreamed of collecting in a jar: Memories come at you like space junk. My sister, Peg, remembers that our mother made us get short haircuts when we were kids because it was easier to take care of. All I know is that when my hair is cut short it's chaotic. I remember the humiliation of the high school yearbook picture with the parted hair all poofed up on one side. And that, only because the picture showed up at the bottom of a box forty years later. Thought is an afterthought. (A BOX OF PHOTOGRAPHS ONCE TAKEN; SISTER TALK OVER DECADES
January 25, 2026 at 7:56 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
cold weather reading
Book cover, which features several shoes in different colors (Andy Warhol style) for the book POSTMODERNISM OR, THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM FREDRIC JAMESON
January 24, 2026 at 1:47 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
girl!
screenshot of weather app: Stratford 8° Feels Like: -12° H:17° L:8°
January 24, 2026 at 1:43 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
an eerily apt bookmark for this curious little book
A green book cover for Jacques Derrida SPURS Nietzsche's Styles EPERONS Les Styles de Nietzsche TRANSLATED BY Barbara Harlow there is a bookmark sticking out the top with several drag queens and the words “Nightly Drag Show!” just visible
January 23, 2026 at 3:45 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
how this swerves in the dialogue in anticipation of the crash

(James Tate, from the book “Shroud of the Gnome”)
AT THE DAYS END MOTEL I turned on the waterworks and said "Well you don't need to make a federal case out of it." But she did and I suppose she needed to. Let's get out of this hellhole, I said. That's a nice dog and pony show you have there, she said Be my guest, I said. You're really chewing up the scenery tonight, she said. And you, you're a predatory woman, one of easy morals, cheap and tawdry. Hey listen schmendrick, at least I'm not an inept nonentity. Aw, Cupcake, don't let's get cruel now, I can't help for stains on the wallpaper, okay? You're like a rabbit responding very rapidly to food. I confess, in a crutch and toothpick parade I would never single you out. Down the road, about a quarter of a mile, a tractor trailer jackknifed and took a station wagon and a minibus with it straight to hell where they had some remarkably good carrot cake. A jackal-headed god of the underworld joined them at their table and was surprisingly convivial.
January 23, 2026 at 3:43 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
This was excellent & *almost* makes me want to go back and read Sein und Zeit…almost.

(also, and of no consequence, the tan color of the cover is most upsetting…)
book cover, which is white with the following in yellow text: JACQUES DERRIDA Heidegger: The Question of Being & History TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY BENNINGTON
January 21, 2026 at 2:20 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
“the nonsense factor like sunshine in the face”

—

James Tate (from Shroud of the Gnome)
ACUPUNCTURE Not the sleep of a baby, maybe, but some sleep, a little sleep, a few minutes here, a few minutes there, it counts for something, not much, some gold dust floating by, fool's gold, and back in the dressing room, the reproach, and the gallantry to go on, and the body snatcher in the chest of drawers, he too wanting a cigarette, hush, the needle on the floor pestering with its testimonials and revolutions, the nonsense factor like sunshine in the face, and the moth-eaten bookworm turning his pages repeats the seven deadly sins but gets them all wrong and curses, committing one. But then it's silence that wakes you with its huge beak and wings, its retching. And the frog of a man you once knew stares for hours down the throat of a nightingale.
January 16, 2026 at 2:38 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
It’s Monday so I can have a bitty book on Hegel as a treat
Book cover of THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS HEGEL by Raymond Plant It’s a grey book with a painting in grey scale of Hegel as the cover
January 12, 2026 at 2:37 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Spent the last 2 weeks being astonished by this James Tate poem from a book I checked out from the library (his “Shroud of the Gnome”):
NEVER AGAIN THE SAME Speaking of sunsets, last night's was shocking. I mean, sunsets aren't supposed to frighten you, are they? Well, this one was terrifying. People were screaming in the streets. Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful. It wasn't natural. One climax followed another and then another until your knees went weak and you couldn't breathe. The colors were definitely not of this world, peaches dripping opium, pandemonium of tangerines, inferno of irises, Plutonian emeralds, all swirling and churning, swabbing, like it was playing with us, like we were nothing, as if our whole lives were a preparation for this, this for which nothing could have prepared us and for which we could not have been less prepared. The mockery of it all stung us bitterly. And when it was finally over we whimpered and cried and howled. And then the streetlights came on as always and we looked into one another's eyes— ancient caves with still pools and those little transparent fish who have never seen even one ray of light. And the calm that returned to us was not even our own.
January 12, 2026 at 2:35 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Back home with the kidney bean
Mikey, the brown chihuahua, curled up asleep on a grey blanket
January 10, 2026 at 2:29 AM
adrianf.bsky.social
This pull-quote, in full, from an Asterism email feels like one of those sentences that would wreck AI - the violent inscrutability:
An amended woman, depose and woman, depose, comes an experimental collection, as during the time it was written: the COVID-19 lockdown and the proceeding global pandemic.
January 7, 2026 at 6:12 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Epigraph to “Embassytown” by China Miéville

(majestic parentheses)
"The word must communicate something (other than itself)." Walter Benjamin, "On Language as such and on the Language of Man"
January 6, 2026 at 3:24 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
From “The Book Of Dead Philosophers” by Simon Critchley
To this extent, Alasdair MacIntyre is surely justified when he writes, Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror.
January 6, 2026 at 12:43 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
sometimes, rarely, we leave the house

@saltpeterdraws.bsky.social

(masks off just for the photo - folks are coughing up a storm! mask-up out there, friends!)
Adrian and Michael, in matching green fuzzy sweatshirts, smile in this selfie. Michael has glasses.
January 5, 2026 at 3:13 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Mikey was not pleased with our departure this morning..
Mikey Burrito, the tawny chihuahua, is curled up on an empty backpack, looking forlorn
January 5, 2026 at 1:56 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
My reading stack for 5 days in Key West!
a stack of books: SHAME - ANNIE ERNAUX, Fitzcarraldo Editions RADICAL THINKERS DERRIDA et al Jacques Derrida - GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS Specters of Marx Between Existentialism and Marxism, Jean-Paul Sartre Embassytown by CHINA MIÉVILLE The BOOK of DEAD PHILOSOPHERS by Simon Critchley
January 4, 2026 at 1:57 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Bernadette Mayer

(from “Milkweed Smithereens”)

#smallpoemsunday
cc: @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Heart A slip of the tongue Between my legs
January 4, 2026 at 1:22 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Anna Akhmatova

(from “Requiem” tr. by D.M. Thomas)
7 The Sentence Then fell the word of stone on My still existing, still heaving breast. Never mind, I was not unprepared, and Shall manage to adjust to it somehow. Thank God, I've many things to do today—I Need to kill and kill again My memory, turn my heart to stone, as Well as practise skills gone rusty, such As to live, for instance... Then there's always Summer, calling out my Black Sea dress! Yes, long ago I knew this day: This radiant day, and this empty house.
January 3, 2026 at 3:51 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Looking forward to this one (& a seasonal re-reading of “Specters of Marx”)

(complementary dog haunch)
a book on a fabric covered stool, next to which stands just the hind leg and front paw of an otherwise unseen dog. the book reads JACQUES DERRIDA TERRY EAGLETON FREDRIC JAMESON ANTONIO NEGRI et al EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY MICHAEL SPRINKER GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS : A SYMPOSIUM ON JACQUES DERRIDA'S SPECTERS OF MARX
December 28, 2025 at 5:43 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
could kiss this cover
A book cover with some simple text in black red and blue: Between Existentialism and Marxism Jean-Paul Sartre
December 26, 2025 at 3:43 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
merry xmas
A screenshot of a tv showing 3 drag queens, one holding a trophy, next to the text “The Kennedy Davenport Center Honors”
December 25, 2025 at 1:07 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
#smallpoemsunday
(cc: @tomsnarsky.bsky.social)
Untitled after Snow A Second Fall Cold Sparks— Trees Lisping The Word glaze
December 21, 2025 at 4:33 PM
adrianf.bsky.social
Rich timing on this one, Harvard:
a picture of columnist David Brooks, with the accompanying text: FEATURED EVENT KIM AND JUDY DAVIS DEAN'S LECTURE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES How America Got into This Mess and How We Recover: Reflections from a Columnist's Life Thursday, February 12, 4 PM ET Knafel Center OR Online on Zoom Join us for a conversation between the columnist and author David Brooks and Harvard Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin as they discuss Brooks's career and his perspectives on American politics, society, and culture.
December 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM