Tag: poet
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Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Isn’t it funny how we write things like that after someone is long gone? I think Vincent (she liked to be called Vincent) would quip that it’s a tad late now for birthday greetings, don’t you think? Well, it’s a little past midnight now, but that’s not really what I mean. Her birthday is February…
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Friday Flashback, Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden
It’s been a busy week in my part of Penn’s Woods–busy, snowy, icy. And while I’ve had a lot to catch up on I thought it would be a shame to miss the chance at a Friday Flashback on W. H. Auden’s birthday. Auden was a technician, my old mentor would say, a master of…
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1979 Footage of William Stafford in Scranton Resurfaces
Often YouTube is prone to fail for me when I get its automated suggestions of “videos to watch.” Yesterday it suggested some wonderful music tutorial videos from my sweetheart Brian from five years ago, while pushing a recent video of my friend and fellow poet Rachel Bunting’s tribute to Maxine Cumin, recently passed poetry legend,…
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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…
