Abundance
And so we move into October. Leaves are the first thing that comes to mind, at least for me. Those bearers of joy and wistfulness. There can never be enough of them, can there?Placing so much value...
View ArticleLeaves
The Greek Anthology is, to a great degree, a chronicle of "change and chancefulness" (Thomas Hardy, "The Temporary the All"), woven through with a gentle and stoic thread of admonition: Live well....
View ArticleMoonlight
Why is it that certain poems dwell within us for years? Have no fear! I am not planning to launch into a meditation on "the art of poetry" or "the wellsprings of creativity." Nor am I going to go...
View ArticleThe Center Of The Universe
A point of clarification at the outset: this post is not about the grandiosity, narcissism, and solipsism of human beings, whether in the public or the private sphere. Thus, for instance, there will...
View Article"An Honest Man Who Will Never Lie To Me"
"The most prosaic man becomes a poem when you stand by his grave at his funeral and think of him." Thomas Hardy (notebook entry, May 29, 1871), in Richard Taylor (editor), The Personal Notebooks of...
View ArticleDover Beach. Calais. Swanage.
We never know which poems will set us on the road to loving poetry. I was a late starter: it was not until my freshman year of college that I began to sit up and take notice. The following poem was...
View ArticlePersistence
One of my afternoon walks takes me through a former army post (now a park) that is located on the bluffs beside Puget Sound. During the Second World War, the post was a way-stop for those departing to...
View ArticleAutumn's Arc
Back in August, I mentioned a row of maple trees that I pass beside in my walks through a marina. At that time, the trees provided one of the first hints of autumn, as did a small flock of Canadian...
View Article"Those Spring Splendors, Like Dreams, Are Gone Beyond Recall"
There is a plainspoken serenity to traditional Chinese lyrical poetry that provides a beautiful counterpoint to the ofttimes declamatory and rhetorical character of traditional English poetry. I...
View ArticleThe Stranger
On several occasions in his poetry and prose Edward Thomas describes enigmatic meetings with strangers encountered during his walks through the countryside. I use the word "enigmatic" because,...
View Article"You Linger Your Little Hour And Are Gone, And Still The Woods Sweep Leafily On"
This year, as autumn has turned, two phrases have been recurring to me. First: "Slow, slow!" (From Robert Frost's "October.") And second: "Earth never grieves!" (From Thomas Hardy's "Autumn in...
View Article"Fall Leaves Fall"
In this part of the world, autumn has thus far been benign, wistful and benign. The winds have rattled the casements now and then. And for some reason the term "polar vortex" (whatever that means)...
View ArticleEvanescence
I cannot claim to have gained any wisdom during my time on earth. The most I have done is to recognize (vaguely) the truth of certain truisms. And even that recognition is fitful, here and then gone....
View ArticleGossamer
The approach of winter has got me to thinking about the small things I will miss until spring returns. The sudden whirr-vibration of a hummingbird -- often unseen, only heard and felt. The kingdoms...
View ArticleHow To Live, Part Twenty-Three: Idleness
Most of the pre-modern Chinese poets were civil servants. Thus, their lives are generally similar in outline. First came the rigorous civil service examination, which required extensive knowledge of...
View ArticleReveries
Irony rules the modern world, together with its noisome colleagues: cynicism, sarcasm, solipsism, and narcissism. Of course, I recognize that irony has always been a part of human nature. And I...
View ArticleA Finger Pointing To The Moon
Each of us knows that the popular culture which surrounds us is vacuous and vacant. But our age is not unique. It has ever been thus. The perpetrators have new identities; the crimes are the...
View ArticleA Lost World, Part Four: Antiquity
Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 - c. 468 B. C.) is best known as the author of the inscription that appeared on the monument to the Spartans that was erected after the battle of Thermopylae. The inscription...
View ArticleSilences
Although they traffic in words, poets are not averse to offering paeans to silence. Which, come to think of it, raises a question: are the words of poets silent or spoken? In the interest of full...
View ArticleHow To Live, Part Twenty-Four: "Quiet Sympathies With Things That Hold An...
I recently came across the following remarkable lines by William Wordsworth: Not useless do I deemThese quiet sympathies with things that holdAn inarticulate...
View Article