A Prayer Blesssomething smallbut infiniteand quiet. There are sensesmake an objectin their simplefeeling for one. Robert CreeleyFebruary 1966 [Editors note: Spelling corrected, pic removed — inappropriately pretty. Search continues] Continue reading “Robert Creeley: A Prayer”
Category Archives: poets and poetry
Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris
These days when we hear the word "tweets" we may not think of birds. But Marie Harris, former poet laureate for New Hampshire, reminds us of the real thing with a quartet of lovely but tough poems about birds and their lives. I'll cite just the first, and encourage readers to search out the rest:Continue reading “Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris”
Rilke: gathering the sweetnessnesses of plant love
While walking the Appalachian Trail with a friend a couple of weeks ago, all through Georgia and into far western North Carolina I found myself in the company of wild violets. Brought to mind this quote from the fourth of Rilke's wide-ranging and ever-fascinating Letters to a Young Poet: …all beauty in plants and animalsContinue reading “Rilke: gathering the sweetnessnesses of plant love”
A huge smokestack of war: Vaclav Havel
As a boy, I lived for a time in the country and I clearly remember an experience from those days: I used to walk school in a nearby village along a cart track through the fields and, on the way, see on the horizon a huge smokestack of war. It spewed dense brown smoke andContinue reading “A huge smokestack of war: Vaclav Havel”
Dreamed in the sunbeams: John Muir
From his unpublished journals written in his sheep-herding days, before Muir came to stay in Yosemite Valley: Dreamed in the sunbeams, when the sheep were calm, the plan of a hermitage: walls of pure white quartz, doors and windows edged with quartz crystals, windows of thin smooth sheets of water with ruffling apparatus to answerContinue reading “Dreamed in the sunbeams: John Muir”
The beautiful secret: Robinson Jeffers
From an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times: [Robinson] Jeffers celebrated the "transhuman magnificence" of nature, the beautiful things both vast and near that can provide even a 21st century reader with solace, even if we are often a muddled, ugly species and even if all things, as they do, fade away. Don't often hearContinue reading “The beautiful secret: Robinson Jeffers”
What really happened to the developer: Chekhov
The New Yorker's great theater critic, John Lahr, hasn't been writing enough. Then on Dec. 12 the magazine doesn't put the compressed grace of his review of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" on line, and further goes on in the truncated "abstract" it does post to mangle Lahr's dramatic wisdom. It's criminal! But no matter —Continue reading “What really happened to the developer: Chekhov”
Two roads diverged in a wood: Robert Frost
Louis B. Jones pens a great essay on Robert Frost, which thankfully The Threepenny Review puts on-line. Here are two gems from it, set together: It seldom occurs to me, frankly, to contemplate any of the thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird; nor could I recite from memory more than a few lines of “Four Quartets,”Continue reading “Two roads diverged in a wood: Robert Frost”
Why we shouldn’t like writer’s houses
From a marvelous piece by April Bernard in the NYRB (only partially available on-line, I should add): Here’s what I hate about writers’ houses: the basic mistakes. The idea that art can be understood by examining the chewed pencils of the writer. That visiting such a house can substitute for reading the work. That realContinue reading “Why we shouldn’t like writer’s houses”
“This most unusual career”: Vaclav Havel
This has been a tumultuous year, and it continues with the loss of one of world's greatest civilians, Vaclav Havel. I miss him already. For me this is perhaps his most essential quote: …you do not become a "dissident" just because one day you decide to take up this most unusual career. Your are thrownContinue reading ““This most unusual career”: Vaclav Havel”
Kit Stolz 