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The point has been made very often by now, but this is a particularly good and compact instance, from the unsigned "Notes & Comments" column in the May issue of The New Criterion: Épater la bourgeois: shocking the middle class has been a cherished goal of the avant garde since the birth of the movement in the…
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Listen to Kathryn Tucker Windham. Notice the way she says the "i" in "silence" and "I". That's the way I say it, although my accent is not nearly as rich as hers–mine is more nasal/twangy. This is the "i" that people render as "ah" when they're trying to capture a southern accent in print. I…
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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had been to St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, Louisiana, and that I had taken more photos with my wife’s camera in addition to the two with my phone that I posted. I finally got around to getting them off the camera and selecting some to post…
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…how many people think (fantasize) like this? And how much of that reflects the success of advertising strategies? (I do, sometimes, though I don't usually act on it. I also have a weird mental habit, a result of reading too many murder mysteries, of imagining myself describing to a cop or a lawyer something that just…
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If I could stop the dawn, I would; if the house across the way should fail to lose its ghostliness to the wretched light of day, I might remain as I am now, might stumble on the truth, might see the beasts of reason serve stripped of claw and tooth. What I have done, what…
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When I look in my mirror what do you think I see? A pair of dull brown eyes that will not look at me. And when I look out my window what do you think I see? All the world and the great blue sky hurrying away from me.
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While parts of the country due north and west from here are having floods and tornadoes, we're having a drought. We had a big storm on Ash Wednesday that dumped several inches of rain in a few hours. That was March 9, almost three months ago now. Since then we have had, I think, three…
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Little brother for all I know the stars are no more distant than your teeth and no more strange I imagine you submerged in the body’s moment no self ever breaking the surface to look down from outside on itself or away to see the waves breaking on a distant beach a line of trees…
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Somewhere in the city which no one loves blind children are begging on corners in their eyes a cyclone of grey light in their ears the jangle of their tags in their hearts the hope of an implausible deliverance and love for those whose burden it is to steal from their cups
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As the dragonfly flies as the treetops bend as these inhabit the air so the mind inhabits the world both pressing and pressed against The surface of things alone impinges the heat of the sun the sound of insects at dry noon the distant flute the storm across the water Something someone is there we…
Light On Dark Water 