A Poem for You: Riverkeeper

2025-06-17T14:45:17-04:00

Riverkeeper Margaret Gibson Wanting to be that place where inner and outer meet, this morning I’m listening to the river inside— also to the river out the window, river of sun and branch shadow, muskrat and mallard, heron, and the rattled cry of the kingfisher. Out there is a tree whose roots the river has washed so often the tree stretches beyond itself, its spirit like mine, leaning out over the water, held only by the poised astonishment of being here. This morning, listening to the river inside, I’m sinking into a stillness where what can’t be said stirs beneath currents [...]

A Poem for You: Riverkeeper2025-06-17T14:45:17-04:00

A Poem for You: Ghazal Circling Fatherhood by Carlos Andrés Gómez

2025-06-17T10:27:07-04:00

Ghazal Circling Fatherhood Carlos Andrés Gómez My mother exalts her long-gone father. Driving home, laments the failings of my father. Sees her ex-husband in my excuses, tells me: That’s just like your father. On holiday, he sneaks away to work; I take a work call. Like son, like father. Before, I tried to outrun my shadow when sun met twilight, like Earth’s late father. God sacrificed his son for his life’s work. So we sing heavenward to honor the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—Forgive me, for I have sinned, become my own father— not who raised me, but those [...]

A Poem for You: Ghazal Circling Fatherhood by Carlos Andrés Gómez2025-06-17T10:27:07-04:00

A Poem for You: The Guitar

2025-06-04T15:40:57-04:00

A Poem for You: The Guitar Federico García Lorca - 1898-1936 The weeping of the guitar begins. The goblets of dawn are smashed. The weeping of the guitar begins. Useless to silence it. Impossible to silence it. It weeps monotonously as water weeps as the wind weeps over snowfields. Impossible to silence it. It weeps for distant things. Hot southern sands yearning for white camellias. Weeps arrow without target evening without morning and the first dead bird on the branch. Oh, guitar! Heart mortally wounded by five swords.

A Poem for You: The Guitar2025-06-04T15:40:57-04:00

A Poem for You: I Sing the Body Electric

2025-04-16T15:05:54-04:00

I Sing the Body Electric BY WALT WHITMAN 1 I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body were not the soul, [...]

A Poem for You: I Sing the Body Electric2025-04-16T15:05:54-04:00

Book of the Month: The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual Of Survival & Manners by J.P. Donleavy (1975)

2025-06-04T15:38:30-04:00

Critical Evaluation "Books of advice come in many forms: financial, spiritual, physical, philosophical. Novels too are books of advice, if read in a certain light. Eve Babitz understood, for example, that part of Colette’s greatness is that you can open her novels anywhere and “brush up on what to do.” There are only two advice books I’ve read more than once. One is Tom Hodgkinson’s “How to Be Idle” (2004). Its title is self-explanatory. The other is J.P. Donleavy’s “The Unexpurgated Code” (1975). Its title is less so. Donleavy’s book is a sendup of the form that happens to be, possibly, [...]

Book of the Month: The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual Of Survival & Manners by J.P. Donleavy (1975)2025-06-04T15:38:30-04:00

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