Personal influence on art and craft (Note: there is a brief video of me lecturing on this topic on my professional blog. You can view it here.) “In my beginning is my end.” T.S. Eliot In his classic essay "Why I Write" George Orwell says we write for sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and… Continue reading A tale of three fathers
Category: poetry
old flames
I’m not much of a “what if” guy. I never spend a lot of time thinking about what would have happened if I had made other choices. It’s probably the Calvinist in me. But sometimes I run across things that remind me of what those choices were. I reconnected with an old college crush on… Continue reading old flames
Night Train
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden., From The River Merchant's Wife Translated by Ezra Pound Past midnight, past city lights, past country fires, the train to Xi'an snakes haltingly through deep tunnels past terraced fields and ancient bridges. I imagine you, waiting, in a smooth silk… Continue reading Night Train
Poetry assignment
iLove It took nine days For my iPod to get here from China. Our love is like that, As inefficient as FedEx on a bad day, As absudist as a playlist with Blackeyed Peas and Gregorian Chants. Where is the Love? In the ear pod. On the hip. It's everywhere you want to be-- The… Continue reading Poetry assignment
Lent, week four
....the pain that Jesus felt was not the nails, but a long and lonely tortured taste of hell.
the daysman 