When W. B. Yeat died on January 28, 1939, a despondent W. H. Auden wrote, “The day of his death was a dark cold day,” an instance of how we look to the weather for confirmation of our distress. The idea of a dying friend slipping away without leaving a trace is an unsettling one. Much better if the weather functions as a second witness, which it seems to do if it metaphorically expresses how we feel. When my good friend Alan Paskow died on Tuesday, I latched on to the fact that the day began with a tornado alert and that we were lashed by slashing rain for much of the morning.
Tag Archives: Mary Oliver
Pretty Is Not What Blazes the Trail
As the ice (or “iron rind”) starts dissolving from the ponds, we may dream of “ferns and flowers and new leaves unfolding.” But the transition from winter to spring is a much grittier affair, characterized less by sweetness and more by lurid smells emerging from chilling mud. The real harbinger of spring may not be the bluebird but the skunk cabbage, celebrated by Mary Oliver in a powerful poem.
From Spiritual Hunger to Obesity Epidemic
Spiritual Sunday My wife Julia has been telling me about a book that she’s reading, Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. The thesis of the book seems to be that overeating, like other compulsions and obsessions, is a means of escaping a spiritual emptiness. Or to put it another […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "When Death Comes", Dubliners, Emptiness, English Patient, Hunger, James Joyce, Michael Ondaatje, Nikos Kazantzakis, Religion, Spirituality, Zorba the Greek Comments closed
Life Storming Out of the Darkness
Spiritual Sunday Today Western Christians observe Pentecost, the day 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 days after his ascension into heaven. Pentecost celebrates the moment when the disciplines saw themselves surrounded by tongues of fire and felt lifted up by the Holy Spirit. In the Book of John (14:16) Jesus is reported to have promised the […]
Stepping over Every Dark Thing
If life seems hard at the moment, I have a poem that may lift you up: Mary Oliver’s “Egrets.” Oliver is, if not the most popular poet writing in America today, at least among the top five. Her poems often function as prayers to a divine spirit running through nature. In this way, she comes […]
Poetry in the Face of Death
Because of my concerns over my friend Alan and his cancer, I will spend another week looking at the role that poetry can play as we confront death and dying. Today’s entry describes how poetry made its way into my life following the death of my son Justin, described in last week’s opening entry […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged death of a child, Fall of Icarus, Lost Children, Musee des Beaux Arts, Pieter Breugel, W. H. Auden Comments closed
