On Thanksgiving Day, I am particularly thankful for great writers. At the top of my list of favorites this year is Henry David Thoreau. I’ve loved Walden for decades, but now, thanks to the work of editor Jeffrey Cramer, I’m reading about what was happening “behind the scenes.” Cramer is … Read More
Month: November 2014
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
Of all of the divisive people in history, T. S. Eliot ranks at the top of the list in the literary world. Some find “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” incomprehensible, fragmented, and boring. Some consider it an inspired masterpiece. In a letter to his brother, the poet wrote … Read More
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
This is the first sentence from The White Album by Joan Didion, a classic from 1979. Known for her precise, unsentimental tone, she “wrote with a cool head in accordance with the principle that the lower the temperature of her prose, the higher the emotional voltage it could carry.” … Read More
“”Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape…”
I have always felt more at home with questions than with answers, and I gravitate toward poets who explore rather than explain. Mary Oliver, one of my favorites, writes in this poem, “I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edge of knowing, truly I … Read More