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“Ask Me,” William Stafford, River Ice and Aunt Cathy
Brian and I drove an hour south to Harrisburg on Friday for a memorial service to celebrate the life of his beloved Aunt Cathy. Let me tell you that lady lived like she was living her life, present and all in. In a beautiful eulogy her sister recalled how she was not afraid to reinvent…
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Reading “The Snow Man,” by Wallace Stevens
The phenomenon of Pennsylvania-born Wallace Stevens gives a guy like me hope. There was a day when great writers had post-university careers outside of the literary and academic fields. William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician, T.S. Eliot, a banker, and even more hopeful for me, Philip Larkin was a Librarian! In this current literary climate where the…
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A Thursday Love Poem (or Two) with E.E. Cummings
My dear friend and champion of peace, Ann Keeler Evans has been reminding me lately about the importance of being present, and in-the-moment. But after starting the new year with a bad cold, followed by a knock-out horrible bout of the flu virus, I found myself needing a little bit of hope. And she’s right, as…
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Richard Blanco’s Penn State Campus Reading
Last night we featured “Killing Mark” by Richard Blanco for our Thursday Love Poem, and included a short video clip of him reading the poem somewhere. The video description wasn’t helpful with that information, so if you know please pass that on! I also mentioned that our local Poetry Under the Paintings crew went to…
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A Thursday Love Poem, “Killing Mark,” by Richard Blanco
We are overdue for another Thursday Love Poem, and as I’ve said before, “a Thursday Love Poem isn’t your grandmother’s love poem, baby.” It’s an unconventional love poem at least, and sometimes it’s a downright anti-love poem, as in the flagship poem of this feature, Edna Saint Vincent Millay’s “Thursday.” If you aren’t familiar with…
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Genesee Trailwalker, Part 3
Originally posted on Rivertop Rambles: All three parts of this series were written and published on Rivertop Rambles around the 20th of January each of three consecutive years. I don’t know what this proves, other than the fact that I’m another creature of habit. I should probably be careful with that. Predictability can be lethal,…
