April 25, 2014
End of Winter by Louise Gluck Over the still world, a bird calls waking solitary among black boughs. You wanted to be born; I let you be born. When has my grief ever gotten in the way of your pleasure?
April 24, 2014
Heidi’s toasted cheese, Du Maurier’s dripping crumpets, the watery gruel that Oliver wanted more of, all foods we really can’t see. We rely on the author’s power of description to help us imagine the feast, or in poor Oliver’s case, the opposite, set before the characters in a book. Until now, that is. With Dinah […]
April 24, 2014
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” — Rita Dove
April 24, 2014
Sweater Weather by Sharon Bryan Never better, mad as a hatter, right as rain, might and main, hanky panky, hot toddy, hoity-toity, cold shoulder, bowled over, rolling in clover, low blow, no soap, hope against hope, pay the piper, liar liar pants on fire, high and dry, shoo-fly pie,
April 23, 2014
Author Elena Poniatowska has won this year’s Cervantes Prize. The 82-year old reporter and activist has written more than three dozen books, including novels, essays, children’s books and nonfiction. “The daughter of French-Polish immigrants to Mexico, Poniatowska began her career writing for the newspaper Excelsior. In an interview with the Madrid newspaper El Pais, she […]
April 23, 2014
This morning on NPR, Steve Shafer reported on the decision by the administration at the San Francisco library to have a full-time social worker on staff to work with the library’s homeless patrons. As program host Steve Inskeep said in his introduction, “whether they like it or not, libraries in some cities serve as homeless […]
April 23, 2014
Today is William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. In celebration, the Globe Theatre in London announced that it will begin a 2-year long tour of Hamlet, staging a production in every nation in the world. As the Bard’s most iconic play, it’s a story that nearly every culture can relate to, and as Globe Artistic Director Dominic […]
April 23, 2014
Sonnet XXV by William Shakespeare Let those who are in favor with their stars Of public honor and proud titles boast, Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, Unlooked for joy in that I honor most. Great princes’ favorites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun’s eye; And in themselves […]
April 22, 2014
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play. And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game. A straggling […]
April 21, 2014
The Whippoorwill by Conrad Aiken Last night, as I lay half awake, A whippoorwill was in this tree, And sang, for the three-quarters moon, Another whippoorwill, and me. At first, I heard him far away — A ghostly whiplash. Then I heard, From the tall tree beneath the moon, What seemed indeed a different bird […]
