Film Friday As this is Friday, I begin with a discussion of a film. But as it is also the tenth anniversary of the drowning death of my 21-year-old son Justin, I plan to digress. I trust you will allow me to embark on a bit of a ramble. The film I have chosen is […]
Tag Archives: death and dying
Dancing to a Bright Star
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Bright Star", "Ode to the West Wind", Adonais, death of a child, Jane Campion, John Keats, Percy Shelley | Comments closed
The Choice: To Die or to Go on Caring
Yesterday we buried a long-time friend, 98-year-old Maurine Holbert Hogaboom, a New York actress who had retired to southern Maryland. Tomorrow we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of my oldest son Justin. April, a month of new beginnings, has too often proved cruel as well. Nature often works ironically. Justin, feeling joyous on a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Castaway", "John Chapman", Herman Melville, Lost Children, Mary Oliver, Moby Dick, William Cowper | Comments closed
Satirizing Doctors, the Best Medicine
Doctors debate while patient dies in Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress,” plate V I’ve talked several times about my friend Alan, who has been battling cancer for a while now. At present he is still alive, still working out at the gym, and still in the dark about what kind of cancer he has. He longs for […]
Poetic Lifelines for Those Left Behind
Lucille, daughters, and granddaughter On Saturday night St. Mary’s College held a memorial service for Lucille Clifton, the noted American poet who was also our teacher, colleague and friend for almost twenty years. For me, the most moving part of the ceremony was hearing Lucille’s remaining three daughters reading their favorite poems. Or rather, they chose […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "february 13, "homage to my hips", "i was born with 12 fingers", 1980", Lucille Clifton, Mothers and Daughters | Comments closed
On Cherry Trees and Time Passing
The ornamental cherry trees on St. Mary’s College campus are in full bloom at the moment. Few moments of the spring are more beautiful. I remember the shock a number of years ago when a beaver moved into the area and took them all down. The animal was deported, new trees were planted, and now […]
Maurine Holbert Hogaboom Exits Stage Left
Yesterday a good friend died. Her name was Maurine Holbert Hogaboom and she was 98. If you want to read about her amazing life—how she journeyed to New York from rural Texas as a member of a burlesque troupe, how she found a living in the theatre, how she was called up before the House […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Add new tag, Homer, Maurine Holbert Hogaboom, Odyssey | Comments closed
Rolled Round with Rocks, Stones and Trees
William Wordsworth One day Robinson Crusoe, the next William Blake, the next William Wordsworth. Thanks to four or five classes cancelled due to snow, my Introduction to Literature class is careening through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But we still had time to stop and contemplate Wordsworth’s wondrous lyric “A slumber did my spirit […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "poem in praise of menstruation", "Slumber did my spirit seal", Lucille Clifton, teaching poetry, Williams Wordsworth | Comments closed
Invading the Afterlife
My wife Julia and I visited the National Geographic Museum to see the Terracotta Warriors this past Friday. Even though only a few statues and artifacts from the vast archaeological digs in China were on display, we saw enough to be very impressed. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, started constructing statues for […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ozymandias", Percy Shelley, politics, Qin Shi Huang, Walter Benjamin | Comments closed
Should Death Be Proud or Not?
John Donne Last December, in writing on Margaret Edson’s play W;t, I noted that I didn’t think John Donne’s famous sonnet “Death Be Not Proud” would be very useful in helping someone handle death. (The dying Donne scholar in W;t doesn’t turn to it.) Since then, a friend pointed out that John Gunther’s 1949 book […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Death Be Not Proud", Adonais, death of a child, John Donne, John Gunther, Percy Shelley, Sonnet 10 | Comments closed
