All Purls. No Swine.
It's the first line of a pretty Christian hymn by Eleanor Farjeon, some of the rest of which goes: Morning has broken Like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken Like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them, springing Fresh from the world! ... Mine is the sunlight! Mine… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “Morning has Broken”
So sue me. I've never really pretended to a deep acquaintance with, nor understanding of, mid twentieth-century American playwrights and screenwriters. And so we have Days of Wine and Roses, a 1958 teleplay by JP Miller with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie , which I've always gotten spectacularly mixed up with Splendor in the Grass,… Continue reading The Brief Sum of Life–In Praise of the Liberal Arts
Cannot believe it's here already. Where has January gone? And February almost half-over! (That it isn't quite, in about 23 hours--in my time zone--can only be attributed to the fact that this is a leap year.) Ubi sunt? (The Latinistas among us (the one or two that I know of) will understand this.) It's a… Continue reading Pancake Tuesday, 2024
While this is a lovely little couplet, with nary a verb in sight, it’s not my favorite Ezra Pound poem. That one is his parody of the Medieval English round, “Sumer is Icumen In,” which starts out: Winter is Icumen In Lhudde sing Goddamm . . . And, indeed, I was singing away and giving… Continue reading These Poems No Verbs
There are differing opinions in the academic world when it comes to one of Rudyard Kipling's best known poems, My Boy Jack, written in 1916. Here's the text: "Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. "When d'you think that he'll come back?" Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. "Has any… Continue reading My Boy Jack: In Memoriam, John Kipling. And Worlds That Are Gone.
On Saturday afternoon, a small group of friends and family and I set out from the farm to enjoy a much looked-forward-to event, Willie Nelson in concert at the nearby (about 30 miles from my front door) Star Lake Amphitheater. I was excited. My entire family, both birth and married, are avid traditional country music fans,… Continue reading Lifting the Curse, and Living to Tell the Tale
William the Conqeror WILLIAM THE FIRST was the first of our kings, Not counting Ethelreds, Egberts and things, And he had himself crowned and anointed and blest In Ten-Sixty-I-Needn’t Tell-You-The-Rest But being a Norman, King William the First By the Saxons he conquered was hated and cursed, And they planned and they plotted far into… Continue reading On the 956th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings
Don't be 'a writer,' but instead be writing--William Faulkner All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know and then go on from there--Ernest Hemingway And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination… Continue reading Quotes of the Day: On Writing
Serendipity! I've recently been re-reading Pattiann Rogers. Her poems are stuffed full of brilliant observations about the physical and metaphysical world. Penned by a gifted writer chock-a-block with scientific knowledge of the natural world, Rogers' work has a distinct kinship to haiku. But haiku it is not. This set me to thinking about what distinguishes… Continue reading Hot Dish on Haiku