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The 400th Post, and a Poem I Wrote
Assonance, it’s good for the heart as well as the ear. And it’s hard to resist sometimes, even in the title to a post. And this post is number 400. Talk about good for the heart! It seems like I’ve been at this longer, and technically I have, but those early days of writing here…
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Saturday Song with The Lumineers, “Dead Sea”
It’s Saturday, and I’ve had a long, long day and just a little sleep. So now with a glass of wine in hand I bring you the song I am unwinding to right now. The last couple of years I’ve really gotten into bands with a lot of instruments, and a decidedly folk-rock feel–Devotchka, Beruit,…
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Friday Flashback, Jon on the Blue Guitar
Last weekend I asked my son Jonathan to bring his guitar with him when he and his younger brother came to stay the weekend. There is something that I cannot quite explain, a feeling of peace and security when the people I love are in the house with me, doing what makes them themselves. The…
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Saturday Song, with Mary Cigarettes, “Bootcamp for the Broken Hearted”
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Saturday Song. This one appeared over two years ago at a time when I really was needing the inspiration. Having finished that degree now, with more unknown territory ahead, and most of a rather difficult year behind me, I thought I’d share this again with you…
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A Thursday Love Poem, “The Four Moon Planet,” by Billy Collins

I don’t know what Robert Frost was thinking when he jotted those words in his notes, “I have envied the four moon planet.” Or maybe he never wrote them at all. Maybe Billy Collins just made the whole thing up. I’ll have to read The Notebooks of Robert Frost to find out for sure. But…
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Pennsylvania “Working-class Poets” in World Literature Today
I was talking about social media here yesterday, and when I dragged myself from covers to coffee and consciousness late this morning, I was surprised to see how much that post had been shared and tweeted about in the early hours of this Wednesday. To say more would be to engage in the kind of…