Tag Archives: Aging

Federer, Unlike Ulysses, a Family Man Hero

Time and again with Roger Federer, thinking he is nearing his end, I have cited Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” He keeps proving me wrong. One reason may be because he has a different relationship with his family than Tennyson’s protagonist has.

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Kranz & Muriel Spark on Insulting the Aged

Today I share a poker post from my 61-year-old novelist and poker playing friend Rachel Kranz, about the indignities of being called “young lady” while at the poker table. Muriel Spark similarly objects to the indignities heaped upon those who are aging in her novel “Memento Mori.”

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How to Keep Beauty from Vanishing Away

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo” works as a Lenten meditation on the beauty of God’s grace.

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Beaten Down by Life

This Scott Bates fable takes a sober look at the aging process.

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The Violins of Autumn

I still remember memorizing, as a child in a French school, Paul Verlaine’s deliciously sad “Chanson d’automne.”

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Wonder in an Old Leather Mitt

Emilio DeGrazia’s poems about an old leather mitt is a wonderful meditation on aging.

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The Night Father Fell Out of Bed

I take a page from James Thurber and the author of Madeleine as I describe “The Night My Father Fell Out of Bed.”

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What Rises So Far Above into the Light?

Denise Levertov’s poem about moving amongst tall trees becomes a meditation on life and afterlife.

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Paying Poetic Homage to Life

Here’s a lovely poem which you probably don’t know about paying “homage to life.”

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