Last weekend I went on a spending spree in New York City. Unfortunately for the economy, it was a poem-elfing kind of spending spree. I hoard poems for future occasions the way some people keep money in special accounts for emergencies. I decided to “spend” my poems in our most literary of cities. Here’s […]
MoreAs Much As You Can by C. P. Cavafy And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk. Try not to degrade it by dragging […]
MoreMy nephew got married a few weeks ago in a joyful rumpus of a wedding followed by a mellower brunch the next day. I waited till the last minute to poem-elf the couple, and then I was disappointed I couldn’t get in their locked car to hide poems. But it worked out. In the absence […]
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, […]
MoreThe Self-Unseeing by Thomas Hardy Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; […]
MorePeoples Drug by Sean Enright Now it’s the Oracle skyscraper but it was Peoples Drugstore back when I bought Raisinets, lighter fluid and label-makers, just a low building next to the pioneer-woman statue, silent stone town founder, a child gathered in her skirt folds, bonnet cinched tight, her birdlike chin, her stovepipe […]
MoreAfter my last post about the value of memorizing poetry, a reader requested a list of great poems to memorize for the summer. My list is short: the greatest poem to memorize for the summer is a poem you love. Love is why children memorize Mother Goose rhymes. Love is […]
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 […]
MoreVariation on a Theme by Rilke by Denise Levertov A certain day became a presence to me; there it was, confronting me–a sky, air, light: a being. And before it started to descend from the height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword, […]
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