Looking for Light in 2021
Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen, Anthem
Category: The Literary File
We (Don’t) Gather Together
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea Happy Thanksgiving.
Rite of Spring
A little Seamus Heaney on this first day of spring. Rite of Spring by Seamus Heaney So winter closed its fistAnd got it stuck in the pump.The plunger froze up a lump In its throat, ice founding itselfUpon iron. The …
The Poet Laureate’s Solstice
The summer solstice arrived at 12:24 am EDT (4:24 GMT). On this longest day of the year, here are a few words to ponder by Tracy K. Smith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and just-announced next poet laureate of the U.S. …
Digging – by Seamus Heaney
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day: “Digging,” by Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks …
That Season of Beginning
Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring… –Truman Capote Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Giving It All (A New Year’s Resolution)
Asked recently to share a favorite piece of advice about writing, this was my pick, from Annie Dillard: One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right …
The Agony of an Untold Story
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” —Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928-May 28, 2014) Read more about Maya Angelou. Read Angelou’s “Still I Rise.”
Gather ye rosebuds…
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s …
Gabriel García Márquez – Responding with Life
While visiting Cartagena last month, we had the opportunity to see the seaside home of Gabriel García Márquez. At the time, we wrote our own, humble, homage to the great Nobel Prize-winning Colombian writer and journalist who died yesterday at age …