Stop for just a moment, or 3 … 3 by John Berryman Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting. Forsake me not when my wild hours come; grant me sleep nightly, grace [...]
Wednesday’s Writer’s Almanac featured a poem by Bruce Taylor entitled “Middle-Aged Men, Leaning.” It begins: They lean on rakes. It’s late, it is evening already inside their houses. The children are gone. Their wives are on the phone talking softly to someone else. This frost, this early Fall upon their minds, a small measure of [...]
I was flipping through my copy of The Art of Worldly Wisdom the other day. It’s a collection of the aphorisms of Baltasar Gracian, who I have quoted here before. I rather liked this one: …For virtue is the bond of all the perfections, and the heart of all life’s satisfactions. It makes a man [...]
What kind of writer do I want to be? My interests are so varied that I’d hate to limit myself to one niche, and in that Roy Blount, Jr. is another writing idol of mine. In a piece on Saturday noting Blount’s birthday, The Writer’s Almanac included this description: Roy Blount has been a freelance [...]
As I mentioned earlier, I’m re-reading Mark Helprin’s most recent collection of short stories, The Pacific. One of the stories is especially apt right now as baseball’s regular season and the history of Yankee Stadium — the House That Ruth Built — come to a close. Entitled “Perfection”, the story is set in 1956 and [...]
Shifting the Sun When your father dies, say the Irish, you lose your umbrella against bad weather. May his sun be your light, say the Armenians. When your father dies, say the Welsh, you sink a foot deeper into the earth. May you inherit his light, say the Armenians. When your father dies, say the [...]
Turning Toward the Morning by Gordon Bok When the deer has bedded down And the bear has gone to ground, And the northern goose has wandered off To warmer bay and sound, It’s so easy in the cold to feel The darkness of the year And the heart is growing lonely For the morning Oh, [...]
What You Realize When Cancer Comes You will not live forever—No you will not, for a ceiling of clouds hovers in the sky. You are not as brave as you once thought. Sounds of death echo in your chest. You feel the bite of pain, the taste of it running through you. Following the telling [...]
Night Writer For the Falling Man by Annie Farnsworth I see you again and again tumbling out of the sky, in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt. At first I thought you were debris from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall or fuselage but then I realized that people were leaping. I know who [...]
No, this isn’t a post about Strommie the would-be polygamist who may or may not be being hunted by Kevin, but about another member of the family — our failing guinea pig, Piggy-Wiggy. He’s not eating which, given his normal appetite, is either a sign of the apocalypse or of ill health. He’s not taken [...]
