This is the opening stanza of “Try to Remember Some Details.” I love the way Amichai gives great meaning to ordinary things. Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing of the one you love so that on the day of loss you’ll be able to say: last seen wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. […]
Category Archives: Reading
Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip
Uplifting and yet tinged with a faint melancholy, Tove Jansson’s lovely comic books about the free-spirited Moomintrolls make me very happy. Drawn and Quarterly (D & Q) released The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip in gorgeous oversized hardcovers last fall, and reading them is sheer delight. There are times when you really need Jansson’s family […]
Poetry Fix: Linda Gregg
Loss is balanced with possibility in this elegiac poem by Linda Gregg. Adult I’ve come back to the country where I was happy changed. Passion puts no terrible strain on me now. I wonder what will take the place of desire. I could be the ghost of my old life returning to the places I […]
The Rabbi’s Cat 2
At last I have the sequel to Joann Sfar’s graphic novel, The Rabbi’s Cat. In his sequel, Sfar once again places his readers and his talking cat in the heart of the Jewish community in 1930’s Algeria. The cast of characters includes the rabbi, his footloose and mystical cousin Malka of the Lions, a suspected […]
Unstinting happiness: a reading by Mary Oliver
The world is glorious and holy, and that’s the first reason we should take care of it, not because we need it.—Mary Oliver On Sunday, Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver shared her poetry at the State Theater in Minneapolis. She’s my favorite contemporary poet. Throughout the reading, I felt tremendous gratitude—both for her precise and […]
Easter Poetry Fix: Czeslaw Milosz
The Polish author’s first great poem—stark and austere, then stinging with emotion. Encounter We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of […]
Poetry Fix: Thomas McGrath
Two short, crystalline poems by North Dakota native Thomas McGrath. * How could I have come so far? (And always on such dark trails?) I must have traveled by the light Shining from the faces of all those I have loved. * You out there, so secret. What makes you think you’re alone? *
Eclipse of the Moon
I’d never witnessed a lunar eclipse before, so on February 20th I set aside my stacks of papers and gazed at the night sky. Through a skylight on the second floor of my house, I watched the moon grow dull and orange, as the lights of Saturn and the star Regulus became more vibrant. Astronomers […]