Listen, I love movies. And I love Broadway musicals. In the
same way, I suppose, that one can love walks in the park and also, deep dish
pizza. Both are story-telling entertainments, but distinctly birds of different
feathers....
Jane Kenyon was born in the Midwest but lived for many years
in New Hampshire, where she was the state’s poet laureate when she died, too
early, in 1995. She suffered from depression for much of her adult life;...
It’s actually a difficult task to make a Best of the Year
film list before the year is over because many of the heavy-hitting
Oscar contenders are released right at year’s end. There are several I’m
looking forward to seeing...
Born Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky, persecuted in his native Soviet Union for the spirit of his poetry and for his Jewish heritage, Brodsky spent five years in an Arctic labor camp, where he composed this poem. In 1972,...
My Favorite Reads of 2014 post yesterday included a special three-book section on a new favorite author, Ron Rash, and today, I'm sharing a poem by this same talent. Maybe I'm becoming a groupie; you be the judge....
I’ve read fifty-seven books this year, one more than last
year which seems strange to me because it certainly felt like I read much more. I blame the fact that I tackled a few
longish books—The Historian and Wolf Hall among...
Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States, and, along with Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes and many others, was part of the Harlem Renaissance, which you can read about here. A short biography...
I have been contemplating many things about this film since
watching it last week. I’ve been thinking about the title, which to an English
speaker with no experience with the French language, translated in my mind to
“Major...
Yesterday evening, I heard the sad news that Kent Haruf had passed away. Earlier in the year, I had entered one of my short stories in a contest he was to judge, and I indulged myself imagining him reading the piece near his...
"As soon as we express something, we devalue it strangely. We believe ourselves to have dived down into the depths of the abyss, and when we once again reach the surface, the drops of water on our pale fingertips no longer resemble the ocean from which they came...Nevertheless, the treasure shimmers in the darkness unchanged." ---Franz Kafka
