From a gloom-and-doom appraisal of the book trade in the Times — which may well be on the mark, may I say — a great quote from the late great John Cheever: I can't write without a reader. it's precisely like a kiss — you can't do it alone. A pic of Cheever from atContinue reading “A writer needs a reader: Cheever”
Category Archives: poets and poetry
The pleasure of making sense of the world: May Swenson
Or trying to. To say something simply and well, is a pleasure like no other. Poetry magazine, a consistently wondrous publication, concludes their December issue, their last issue of the year, with an essay on May Swenson that could not be gentler, nor more sweetly loving. Example? Simply publishing a stanza that may be oneContinue reading “The pleasure of making sense of the world: May Swenson”
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel like eating…everything
Dana Goodyear, the editor/poet/reporter (for The New Yorker) has focused in the last couple of years on the weird edges of foodie culture of today. At least from a traditonalist's perspective, the foodie culure of today has evolved from deliciousness, to hipness, to eating what others haven't — and decadence. Anything that Moves is anContinue reading “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel like eating…everything”
I can’t pretend to be interested in your books: Chekhov
A Times review of a"Seagull" set in Ireland during the time of "the Troubles" doesn't love the production but brings its wit out lovingly nonetheless. Among the production’s freshest scenes is the brief colloquy between the bluntly bitter Mary and Aston. Mary’s no-nonsense approach to the impossibility of finding lasting love is in contrast toContinue reading “I can’t pretend to be interested in your books: Chekhov”
Seamus Heaney: The main thing is to write for the joy of it
The New York Times gives half its front page to Seamus Heaney on the occasion of his death, and deservedly so, but my favorite remembrance comes from Ojai's lost poet, Robert Peake, gone to London and good for him, and good for beginning the memory of a poet with, yes, one of his poems: ThenContinue reading “Seamus Heaney: The main thing is to write for the joy of it”
Day jobs of the poets: Grant Snider
From Grant Snider: Useful to remember that poets can practical too, and hard-working.
I think we are inside a flower, under a pollen of stars
Love this one, called Kauai, via the almost always worthy Poetry Daily: We’ve come back to the site of her conception. She calls it why and cries all night, sleepless, wild. It seems the way is always floating and the goal — to live so the ghosts we were don’t trail us and echo. I thinkContinue reading “I think we are inside a flower, under a pollen of stars”
Rain comes to the desert: Chris Clarke
The ecologists never fail to describe coastal Southern California as a semi-arid region, which all too many residents transmute into "desert." It's not! Big difference between a land of some rain and a land of no rain. Trees, for one. As Chris Clarke, who has an interesting gig writing for KCET points out, rain oftenContinue reading “Rain comes to the desert: Chris Clarke”
“That’s not a safe altitude”: Moonrise Kingdom
Do you ever change your mind about a work, or act, or a person? Last year I saw "Moonrise Kingdom" and hated it. Unbearably cute, I thought. But then I started to remember it with affection, how preposterously droll it was. (See above.) Then I saw about a thousand reviewers love it, and evenContinue reading ““That’s not a safe altitude”: Moonrise Kingdom”
You do not have to be good: Mary Oliver
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.MeanwhileContinue reading “You do not have to be good: Mary Oliver”
Kit Stolz 