I’ve always had something of an ambivalent attitude towards John Updike. I’ve known his work for ages – he grew up in Shillington, PA, just a stone’s throw or so from where I grew up. He was raised a Lutheran, an upbringing that he seemed to struggle with as well as be marked by. I’ve loved his short stories as much as anything I’ve ever read, but sometimes been less than taken by even his celebrated novels. I don’t know why – perhaps they were too “earthy” for this kid. But it’s precisely the “earthiness” of “Seven Stanzas at Easter” that I love about...
Red Balloon Rising: ...
posted by DJL
There is a simplicity to Laurel Blossom’s “Red Balloon Rising” that I find strangely evocative. Perhaps it’s that we celebrated my daughter’s birthday this past week. When she was much younger part of our birthday preparations would be driving together to the...
Still I Rise: A Poem...
posted by DJL
So much of Maya Angelou’s poetry is simultaneously defiant and uplifting. “Still I Rise” is one of my favorites, recognizing the difficult, at times terrible past African Americans suffered only to draw strength from it so as to confront a sometimes difficult and terrible...
Coat: A Poem for Fri...
posted by DJL
There is something melancholy, poignant, and utter recognizable in Vicki Feaver’s poem “Coat.” She names an experience that we have all had, or at least can imagine: giving up on someone we once loved from the desire to be free, only to discover that freedom can be pretty...
Desert Places –...
posted by DJL
What I appreciate about Robert Frost’s poetry is the “rhythmic logic” that always seems to yield a kind of desperately honest beauty. Here is comes especially in two places. “And lonely as it is that loneliness / Will be more lonely ere it will be less” and...