Word of the Week: brouhaha (BROO-hah-hah) Definition (Noun) a state of commotion or excitement : hubbub, uproar. In Context "But where do you go, when the temperatures are soaring and you want to cool off but without all of the brouhaha that comes along with a trip to one of our more popular, crowded city beaches?" Ji Suk Yi, The Chicago Sun-Times, 25 July 2018.
Invitation BY MARK KIRSCHEN Come out into the open where We all are: at the center of a bridge Whose dark river draws all light And the nearest weeds to itself Here to search out love— Discarded hearts at the city's edge— Where fish follow their fathers' routes And we cannot lift up to thread the constellations If you meet me here I will make you a myth: you will show As cold points between the clouds If you meet me here your light Will hold the eyes of descendants Unable to find a crossing over the dark river
Word of the Week: fugacious (fyoo-GAY-shus) Definition (Adjective) lasting a short time : evanescent. In Context “The maple leaves are a yellow light signaling me to slow down and take in the last pulse of color of a fugacious fall." David Johnson, The Daily News of Newburyport (MA), 26 Nov. 2013.
Such Beauty from Ashes BY CAROLYN MARIE RODGERS and we are singing our hearts out, and our souls are in our eyes, and they are beautiful souls. they are souls of truth. they are souls of love. they are souls of faith. they are souls of hope. and we have conquered a little corner in the world of fear. and we have stepped up and forward, and we have torn down walls. we have smashed sound barriers between us. we have dared again and again and yet again to dream, and our dreams have finally taken material form. we have [...]
Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise BY JAY HOPLER Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated, And every porch light in the neighborhood is lit, Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new Way of experiencing the world, a way of taking Into myself the single light shining at the center Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric Planets orbiting around it. What you'd like is a more Attentive lover, I suppose—· Too bad that slow, Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards The storm drain is not a vein of stars . . . [...]
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh I’m driving home from school when the radio talk turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit the here and now of the freeway at rush hour, travel back into the past, where my mother is reading to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math, how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief multiplies the one preceding it, how the [...]
Book of the Month: The Candy House (2022) by Jennifer Eagan Critical Evaluation "If The Candy House is less cohesive than “Goon Squad,” it may be because its subject is harder to get one’s arms around. The story doesn’t describe an arc so much as a network diagram; it doesn’t end, it stops. The biggest criticism I can make of The Candy House is that it kicks us out just when it seems to be getting started. But that is also the strongest praise I can give it. Egan knows that she can never offer a complete picture of the global [...]
