May 2018
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somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself…
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Having been immersed in the world of medieval Scandinavia for a couple of weeks while reading The Master of Hestviken, I wanted to get more acquainted with its mythology. I knew the main figures and one or two stories, but had never read anything very systematic or complete. So I started reading the Prose Edda, which I've…
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Now, when you've read this poem, before you say or think "Why did he post this miserable depressing little poem?!?" read my comments following it. * HOME IS SO SAD Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back.…
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[Update: the first part of this post attracted some hostile attention on Facebook. It was taken as intending to disparage and dismiss concerns about the mistreatment of women by men. That was most certainly not my intention. I was about to say "Needless to say…" but clearly it's not needless, at least for some people.]…
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The collection of Phyllis McGinley's work called Times Three is organized by decade. This poem is from the "The Forties." * BALLAD OF FINE DAYS "Temperatures have soared to almost summer levels…making conditions ideal for bombing offensives." –Excerpt from B.B.C. news broadcast All in the summery weather, To east and south and north, The bombers fly together…
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"The Murray project is dead." I saw that statement somewhere on Facebook some time ago, and I can't remember who said it, or I would give him or her credit. It struck me, though, and, obviously, stayed with me. The reference is to John Courtney Murray, S.J., whom I have never read, but I know…
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AS ONE LISTENS TO THE RAIN Listen to me as one listens to the rain, not attentive, not distracted, light footsteps, thin drizzle, water that is air, air that is time, the day is still leaving, the night has yet to arrive, figurations of mist at the turn of the corner, figurations of time at…
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I would prefer to think that a more accurate title for Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed would have been Why Liberalism Is Failing. That it is failing seems clear. It's a Carnival Cruise liner heading for the rocks while the drunken captain tries to seduce a passenger, a 747 with three engines out and slowly losing…
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My first introduction to the poem I am writing about was in a novel I was reading about 30 years ago. An artist was talking to a young woman about poems that are pictures. The first poem was The Lady of Shalott, and then he quoted a more recent poem. He could only remember the…
Light On Dark Water 