Poets make us pay attention to our guides
This being human is a guest houseEvery morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,who violently sweep your houseempty of its furniture,still treat each guest honorably.He may be clearing you out for …
Peace went missing
The news from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, today is sickening, numbing, maddening. With thoughts of the families so tragically torn apart from their loved ones, so wrong, so desperately horribly wrong. Our society is broken, somehow. We must fix it, you and I. Let’s start now. [image from here]
Poets show us that eventually is a luxury
You Reading This, Be Ready Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you …
Our prejudices, ourselves
I have been watching the "dialogue" about Don Imus making racial slurs on his radio show with great interest, seeing as how my work centers around the issues involved. I’ll write some op-ed pieces about it, no doubt, in the coming days. But in the meantime, my friend Joan (thanks, …
Poets tell us to write
Sonnets To Orpheus II, 29 Still friend of many distances, feel howyour breath increases space even now.In the timber-frames of shadowy bell towerslet yourself ring. That which saps your powers grows ever stronger from this sustenance.Through transformation, cross the borderline.What’s your most sorrowful experience?If drinking you is bitter, turn to …
Poets tell us Yes, Yes, Yes
National Poetry Month (what on earth shall we celebrate next month? National Johnny Depp Month?) continues with this poem sent yesterday by Lela Davidson. I fell in love with it immediately:God Says Yes to Me I asked God if it was okay to be melodramaticand she said yesI asked her …
For Mr Brilliant
In the three years I’ve been writing 37days, Mr Brilliant has never asked me to post something. Until today. This is for him, a little Bruce for a Friday afternoon, singing in East Berlin the year before the Wall fell. Take 6 minutes and 58 seconds out of your day. …
Ut pictura poesis
It all started at Guilford College, this fascination with literature and the visual arts, with a wonderful professor named Lee Johnson. It continued into graduate school, with a fabulous art history professor named Paul Barolsky who taught me about art through poems written about the art. Well, to be true, …
Incredible
Sent by my friend Kim, this is amazing. Too many times, the visual display of quantitative information doesn’t work. Even Tufte pales in comparison. Go, see.
Writers die, voices remain
In memory of Kurt Vonnegut, Mr Brilliant’s patron of sorts. I just heard that Vonnegut died yesterday. In his own famous words from Slaughterhouse-Five, "so it goes." Writers die; thankfully their voices remain. And so, a poem in his voice: Requiem When the last living thing has died on account …
