Today, Thanksgiving Day, should not end before we think about the writers who have changed us. For me, the one who floats to the top this year is Mary Oliver. It’s hard not to say “wow” after reading a poem like “Wild Geese” . You might expect it to … Read More
Author: Tony Herman
“They could tell it was Jun Do who’d picked which orphans ate first and which were left with watery spoonfuls.”
When Jun Do was a child living in an orphanage in North Korea, one of his responsibilities was to decide which of his peers would be punished. That was just the beginning. As an adult, he was often in the impossible position of trying to let the most innocent suffer … Read More
“I am the rest between two notes . . . in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling.”
This poem about tension and transition is classic Rainer Marie Rilke. He explored both of these dynamics frequently in a his letters, which were published in a book titled Letters to a Young Poet. (They are among the most famous, best -loved letters in all of literature.) In them, … Read More
“Every behavior has more than one cause.”
Looking for a simple explanation for why some people are introverts and others are extroverts? Then don’t read Susan Cain’s book Quiet. Her explanation has not one, not two, not three, but four factors: our inborn temperament, environment, free will, and how these interact at any given time. She … Read More
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”
This is the opening line of a poem written by the revolutionary William Wordsworth in 1804. He shook things up by experimenting with “real language” (as opposed to the formal style found in serious writing), and he wrote about feelings (as opposed to intellectual matters). This line has stuck with … Read More
“Only the past interests me now.”
Albert Einstein wrote that the separation between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. This idea is at play in Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. The narrator is an old woman who looks back and concludes that she has waged a … Read More
“Now I become myself.”
Parker Palmer quotes this wonderful opening line from a poem by May Sarton in his collection of autobiographical essays Let Your Life Speak. For him, the process of “becoming” meant taking many wrong turns before finding the right ones. People who know him only as the highly successful best-selling … Read More