for the month of february: love.

It is an aspiration to share a poem a day here on this blog for the month of February. The reason, I will share , at the end of the month. What I can say in this moment, though, is how surprised I am at the solace poetry can provide. I recently purchased {Risking Everything}: [...]

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quote for the day

“Friendship. Montaigne said that friendships are the freest of all relationships. And in the open-ended ambience of the creative life, where there are no sure things and career paths are not marked out and the advice of parents and teachers frequently proves useless, the friend with whom to talk to, to see things, to make [...]

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quote for the day

“It is books, poems, and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge….There must have been little beauty in old stones before Japanese priests and poets began writing about them.” ~Alain de Botton, from “The Architecture of Happiness” (a beautiful , [...]

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eloquent speech by Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize winner

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html I had to read this speech several times. It made me want to load up a plane with all the extraneous books that just are lying about here in America, in basements of homes, garage sales, and dumpsters, unappreciated, wishing to be cracked open,  and fly it over Zimbabwe, and drop these books from [...]

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copper canyon press

 This is a favorite poetry journal. Twice a year, they publish a catalog of their books, with  excerpts of poems. The catalog alone is worth getting and savoring. I usually wish after reading it, that I could place several orders. I am pretty sure I can say that you will “get” poetry, after just one [...]

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how to get inspired, exercise your creativity, get away from advertising, have tactile joy, be elegant, and slow down time

Elizabeth Berg, one of Chicagoland’s own, wrote an essay in today’s Books section of the Chicago Tribune. Her “resolution” this year, is to read ONE HOUR PER DAY. What if everyone did this – read something that inspired, excited, cheered, educated them? Something, though, that FED their spirit and their soul? (ie, probably not the [...]

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thoughts on a new year

i don’t celebrate new year’s eve, or believe in the gregorian calendar concept of a new year. this op-ed piece by verlyn klinkenborg a worthy reflection on the subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon3.html?th&emc=th

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