Tag Archives: Depression

Lessons from Being Cold & Depressed

Thursday The polar vortex that is freezing America’s northern states gives me an excuse to rerun a post I wrote on Mary Oliver’s “Cold Poem.” If you want a silver lining for extreme cold, Oliver has one. Reprinted from January 8, 2014 Much of the United States is caught in extremely cold temperatures at the […]

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Burdened by Ice

Spiritual Sunday With much of the country groaning under the weight of winter storms, I share a Robert Hayden poem in which the speaker calls out to God in his misery. I warn you the poem does not conclude with a comforting—or a facile—promise. Sounding very much like George Herbert in his inability to pray, […]

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God Loves As If There Were Only One

Martha Serpas’s “As If There Were Only One” sounds as though the speaker is emerging from a deep depression and learning to love again.

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Sorrow, Tears, Emptiness Are Necessary

Rob finds redemption in suffering and sorrow in “But for Love,” a good Lenten message.

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Walking Down the Saddest City Lane

In which I read Robert Frost’s “I Have Been Acquainted with the Night” as an Advent poem.

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Derealized or Appareled in Celestial Light?

Wordsworth arrived at the underlying idea of “Intimations of Immortality” from a childhood experience that sounds like what psychology now calls depersonalization-derealization disorder.

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Fall, Season for Beautiful Depression

Those suffering from depression will find a kindred spirit in this gorgeous St. Vincent Millay poem about autumn.

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Wordsworth and a Depressed Philosopher

When utilitarian John Stuart Mill’s philosophy led him into despair, Wordsworth’s poetry saved him.

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Lincoln Transformed Depression thru Lit

Melancholy threatened to paralyze Abraham Lincoln in his early years. Literature helped him give voice to his depression and taught him how to turn it into an asset.

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