Tuesday Julia and I returned home last night after 16 days on the road. Given that we traveled from Sewanee to Washington, D. C. to southern Maryland to Pennsylvania to Cincinnati to Des Moines and back to Sewanee, I lacked the energy to write a new post. I’ve therefore repurposed an old essay on the […]
Monthly Archives: May 2019
Bilbo Back from a Long Journey
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Roads Go Ever On and On", J. R. R. Tolkien, returning home, traveling Comments closed
Are We Overanalyzing Trump?
Monday My son gave me a tough-love talk about my writing at a wedding reception this past Saturday afternoon. We were in Iowa together for my wife’s nephew and Darien took a few moments to express doubts about book he is helping me self-publish. While he is a big supporter of the blog, he worries […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Knight" Donald Trump, Alexander Pope, Arthur Conan Doyle, Death and the Compass, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Jorge Luis Borges, Study in Scarlet Comments closed
The Wine of Love Is Music
Spiritual Sunday I attended a joyous Des Moines wedding yesterday, one where the bride, an avid runner, wore running shoes. The groom is a runner as well. Things promise well. Here’s a lovely wedding poem by the 18th century poet James Thomson, author of The Seasons and “Rule, Britannia.” I send it out to all […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Wine of Love Is Music, James Thomson, love, Weddings Comments closed
Alabama Returning Women to Doll’s House
Friday I’m missing much of the news as I travel across country but managed to hear about Alabama threatening doctors who perform abortions with 99-year prison sentences. Here’s a post I wrote four years ago about how state legislatures are infantilizing women. I managed some optimism then but, with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh now on the […]
Music Only Poets Can Hear
Thursday As I’m currently traveling, I’m reposting an essay I wrote seven years ago about a poem by Xavier University’s Norman Finkelstein, whom we dined with last night. Norman was my best friend in graduate school and this may be my favorite of his poems, perhaps because I too am in love with Kenneth Graham’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", Kenneth Grahame, Norman Finkelstein, wind in the willows Comments closed
Swift on the Separation of Powers
Wednesday As Donald Trump seeks to neuter Congress while at the same time welcoming autocrats to the White House, we find ourselves praying that Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and others who love our Constitution can successfully push back. It’s a battle we see dramatized in Gulliver’s account of the flying island. The executive power in this instance […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged constitutional crisis, Donald Trump, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, separation of powers Comments closed
R.I.P. Doris Day, America’s Sweetheart
Tuesday To honor Doris Day’s memory, who died yesterday at 97, here’s a John Updike poem. When he wrote it at 76, Updike was having a hard time admitting that Day was 86. Our memories of movie stars remain forever young, even though time itself moves on. Oscar Levant once joked that he knew Day […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Her Coy Lover Sings Out", Doris Day, John Updike, movie stars Comments closed
Old Friends Recall the Midnight Chimes
Monday When Julia and I reunited with my senior Carleton roommates recently, I found myself thinking of the reunion that concludes Henry IV, Part II. To be sure, our memories didn’t involve loose women we had encountered in our youth. Nevertheless, there was an elegiac feel to our gathering as there is in the play. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Henry IV Part 2, old friends, reunions, Time, William Shakespeare Comments closed
To My First Love, My Mother
Spiritual Sunday Christina Rossetti honors her mother with this unorthodox sonnet that speaks for itself. The “blessed glow” of Mother Love “transcends the laws/ Of time and change and mortal life and death.” Apparently Rossetti’s mother encouraged her in her sonnet writing, giving the poem additional resonance. Happy Mother’s Day to the many mothers in […]
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