Posted in Poetry, Reading, Writing, tagged books, essays, Mary Oliver, Poetry, prose, Reading, Winter Hours on August 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Summer flowers:
And Mary Oliver’s Winter Hours:
Just a day or two after I finished reading this unseasonal book, my favorite person in the world brought home the citrus-colored bouquet “just because,” and I felt so very lucky to have two opposite seasons collide so beautifully in my world.
Oliver’s collection of prose, prose poems, and poems is [...]
Posted in Art, Creating, Living, Poetry, Reading, tagged Living, Poetry, sacred, simplicity, summer, Wendell Berry on August 19, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’m back from a quiet, introspective summer interlude. I didn’t exactly mean to take a vacation from blogging, but books, a much-needed rest, and time shared with family and friends have filled our days.
I’ve been reading, for example, Wendell Berry’s collection, Given:
The exquisite poem “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” is included [...]
Posted in Living, Poetry, Reading, Writing, tagged books, Jane Hirshfield, poet, Poetry, Writing on June 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
After several months of intermittent reading and contemplation, I finally finished Jane Hirshfield’s exquisite collection of essays about poetry-writing. I found the closing essay, “Writing and the Threshold Life” particularly profound, or at least, particularly meaningful to me at this point in time. In it, Hirshfield proposes that the writer must enter into liminality–a threshold [...]
Posted in Living, Poetry, tagged Lake Tahoe, Poetry, Rumi on May 27, 2008 | 2 Comments »
“In your light, I learn to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.” – Rumi
Posted in Poetry, tagged Jane Hirshfield, Poetry on March 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »
In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs
In a room with five people, six griefs.
Some you will hear of, some not.
Let the room hold them, their fears, their anger.
Let there be walls and windows, a ceiling.
A door through which time
changer of everything
can enter.
- Jane Hirshfield, from After
Posted in Poetry, Reading, Writing, tagged fiction writer, Naeem Murr, poet, Poetry, short story on January 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
It’s a gray winter day, and I’m catching up on my reading, which includes five or six back issues of Poetry. In the July/August 2007 issue, I came across a short story titled “My Poet” by Naeem Murr. It made me laugh so much with its hilarious but loosely accurate characterizations of poets and fiction [...]
Posted in Poetry, tagged Block Island Poetry Project, books, Mary Oliver, Poetry, workshop on January 24, 2008 | 2 Comments »
If I were a poet, I would go to Block Island this spring just to hear Mary Oliver. I really would.
Protective of the privacy necessary to her creative process, Oliver rarely gives readings, but she will be participating in the April 3 – May 4, 2008, Block Island Poetry Project. Also in the spring, Beacon [...]
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