I didn’t set out to make February “Billy Collins Month”, but it appears that I have. ☺ So one more of my favorites: “Forgetfulness.” If you have a parent or sibling or friend who has experienced memory loss, you know how painful and frightening it can be. Memory, in so many ways,...
Absence
posted by DJL
I am on a Billy Collins kick of late. I don’t usually choose from the same poet this often, but you’ll have to forgive me: it’s February. And my school is currently a mess. And I feel I’ve been pulled to one of those unexpected and, frankly, uninvited vocational and existential...
As I Walked Out One Evening
posted by DJL
There has been a lot written about W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” But rather than read or write about it, I invite you instead simply to listen to Auden himself recite it. As you do, the clash of themes – the power of love, the relentlessness of time, the beauty and fragility of being human – all emerge. Some poetry is as much meant to be heard as read, and I think this is one of those. Enjoy. As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ...
The Gift Outright
posted by DJL
Robert Frost was the first poet I really enjoyed while in school. That’s probably not surprising. Not being by nature inclined to poetry, I found that Frost’s lyricism – and his popularity – made him more accessible to me. So I, like many, many others, knew him through beloved poems...
To the People, Yes
posted by DJL
I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, hoping to finish it before going to see to Steven Spielberg’s adaptation, Lincoln. (We’ll see if I can wait that long.) One of the central themes of the book is that Lincoln had a...