Poetry

According to local legend, Theodore Roethke, upon hearing word that he had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, turned to the class he was teaching (someone had popped in to tell him the news) and cried, "To the Moon!" Read more about Wintery

Harvey Washington Wiley isn't a name I had known before reading the March 1912 issue of The National Geographic Magazine, but if you are among those who care about the quality of your food supply, you should, perhaps, build a little shrine to him somewhere in your kitchen. Read more about What's In It?

The sixth of January is the traditional day of Epiphany in the Western Church, the last day of Christmas, and the day I generally begin to think about taking the tree down. Note the ambivalence. Read more about Epiphany

Well, I tried. I Googled "Boxing Day Poems" and came up with some of the worst poems I've read in a long time. It doesn't seem to be a day that inspires. It's not even a day anybody outside of the shrinking British Empire knows anything about.

I actually am filling boxes of things for the poor - my poor daughter, who just moved out and has still to collect an Armageddon's worth of flotsam and jetsam. Read more about Boxing Day

So soon after this year's Massacre of the Innocents, I can think of only one piece of poetry, one piece of music, one piece of age-old longing for deliverance from pain and sorrow, that will do.

George Frideric Handel's Messiah. Which begins with the words Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.

Read more about Comfort Ye

There was a very interesting conversation going on at my table last Saturday night at our annual 46th District Democrats Holiday Party about the problems of teaching math. By a math teacher. Who more or less confessed that he still didn't know how to do it. I think he likely does do it, and do it rather well, but he didn't feel satisfied with his own efforts. Which made me think well of him.

The problem, he said, was the difference between knowing and teaching. If you've ever tried to teach someone how to tie their shoes or parallel park, you get the idea. Read more about Teaching Poetry

Sunday night. Pouring rain. The last parking space before the bluff. Socks in sandals. Soaking wet.

A friend had suggested I meet her at St. Mark's Cathedral for the O Antiphon Service. Read more about Anthem

Owl in the Black Oaks

(Like this Blogger, I too am reading my way through Mary Oliver. Perhaps before the end, I will be reading no one but her. The others are important, but when I return to Oliver, I'm no longer convinced they are necessary.)

If a lynx, that plush fellow,
climbed down a
tree and left behind
his face, his thick neck

and, most of all, the lamps of his eyes,
there you would have it -
the owl,
the very owl

who haunts these trees,

Thanksgiving has come round again. On this side of the pond we think we are reenacting an old morality play, one in which Squanto and Massasoit save the Pilgrims with eels and corn turkey and sweet potatoes, for which the Pilgrims thank them God. Read more about Come Ye Thankful People

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.