April 2018
-
I had planned to write about something else tonight, but last night I watched the last two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return, and for the moment am obsessed with it. I can't remember whether anyone who comments here besides Rob G is a fan and would care, and I know he's seen it, but I'll
-
TO CHARLES WILLIAMS Your death blows a strange bugle call, friend, and all is hard To see plainly or record truly. The new light imposes change, Re-adjusts all a life-landscape as it thrusts down its probe from the sky, To create shadows, to reveal waters, to erect hills and deepen glens. The slant alters. I
-
It seems I'm not the only person who thinks the most noticeable thing about Twitter is the amount and level of venom it seems to produce, very often in combination with stupidity. I freely admit that this is unfair on my part, because I'm not on Twitter, and so all I hear about for the
-
TypePad is doing more hardware and software upgrades tonight beginning at 8pm Central Time (the email says CST but it's probably CDT). They don't say how long they expect it to last but I assume a few hours or so. I gather they won't necessarily be offline during the whole period. But if you can't
-
The time may not be very far away when this poem will need a footnote explaining that the speaker is reading a "newspaper," and how they worked. The New York World-Telegram was a daily that ran from 1867 until 1966, and is probably the paper referred to here. The poem was written in 1939. It is
-
On Friday I finished reading The Master of Hestviken. On Saturday I had a conversation via text messages with a friend who had just finished Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. He asked whether I had any recommendation as to what to read next. I replied, "At the moment I don't think any novelist except Undset is really
-
This is not one of my favorite poems. So why am I writing about it? Because it contains one bit, one clause of a sentence, that I think of at least once a week, possibly more often than that. The "land agitation" in the title was a series of efforts at land reform in Ireland
-
Still thinking about the gun control question: I've had trouble articulating even to myself my reasons for thinking that a definitive repudiation of the right to keep and bear arms–i.e., repeal of the 2nd Amendment–would represent a major change in the culture and the self-understanding of this country, and even imply at least the possibility
-
THERE NEVER WAS TIME I wish, he said, the years would linger And fly less fast to make me old; My face is a mask that time’s swift finger Models, moulding wrinkle and fold In sagging flesh youth fashioned true To the ageless image engraved on brass, Of a young face Rome or Athens knew.
-
Easter Sunday When I was twelve years old, an aunt and uncle gave me two books for Christmas, both part of a series or set called The Looking Glass Library. These were The Haunted Looking Glass and The Looking Glass Book of Verse. The first was a collection of classic ghost stories, though of course I didn't know
Light On Dark Water 