A break from poetry today to showcase a few lines from a brilliant novel. Decades before English writer Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice in four years (becoming the only woman to win the prize twice and the only writer to win it for a sequel), she wrote another historical novel, A Place […]
MoreAmong Women by Marie Ponsot What women wander? Not many. All. A few. Most would, now & then, & no wonder. Some, and I’m one, Wander sitting still. My small grandmother Bought from every peddler Less for the ribbons and lace Than for their scent Of sleep where you will, Walk out […]
MoreGames by Jack Gilbert Imagine if suffering were real. Imagine if those old people were afraid of death. What if the midget or the girl with one arm really felt pain? Imagine how impossible it would be to live if some people were alone and afraid all their lives. I […]
MoreI had dinner the other night with an Englishman who couldn’t grasp the idea of blogging. How do you make money? he asked me, and when I told him the blog doesn’t pay, he offered several suggestions to spruce up my “business” and start bringing in the big bucks. There may be no paycheck, […]
MoreI’m an Anglophile. I like repression, I suppose, depth under calm facades. My favorite writers—Austen, Dickens, Penelope Fitzgerald, Jane Gardam, David Mitchell, Barbara Pym, Andrea Levy to name a few—have always been Brits, and now my favorite education secretary—if one can admit to such pedantic tastes—is English as well. British education secretary Michael Gove […]
MoreIf you think, as I sometimes do when a particularly arcane poem shows up in my inbox courtesy of the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day feature, that poetry is written by and for the same kind of people who prefer wasabi truffles to straightforward chocolate caramels; or if you think that classic poetry has as […]
MoreRarely does my neighborhood offer peculiar sights. There’s a walker who charges down the street with ski poles in the middle of summer and a very tall cross-dresser I haven’t seen in years. During swim team season toilet paper hangs gracefully from trees, and in the spring girls in prom dresses duck into limousines. That’s […]
MoreThe last thing we need is one more national themed day or month that no one cares about or notices. But after reading the New York Times magazine this past Sunday, I’m going to suggest a new one. As I noted last week, April 26 is “Put a Poem in Your Pocket Day.” The following day […]
MoreI keep poems I’ve copied and can’t use for my blog the way some people keep slices of meatloaf in the freezer—-why throw away what can be consumed later? I had dozens of poems leftover from my niece’s recent wedding (link here), two or three extra copies of poems I’d already written about, as […]
MoreA quickie post while I figure out what poem I’ll post next and where I’ll put it. My daughter sent me a video I want to share. The title, “Free to Be You and Me,” sounds like a coloring book for a self-esteem presentation. Self esteem presentations make me gag. But I didn’t gag […]
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