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Blogroll
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Recent Posts
- Love for All Seasons
- Baseball’s Decline
- The Left’s War on Free Speech
- Reflections on the 2017 Philip Larkin Exhibition at Hull
- Perhaps Someday We Will Learn How to Live
- America’s Unofficial Poet Laureate: Mary Oliver
- On First Looking Into Milford’s Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Sarah Teasdale: “There Will Come Soft Rains”
- Is Mindfulness Warmed-over Buddhism?
- She showed us the way: Reflections on Mary Tyler Moore
- Book fan, Barack Obama
- Happiness: What it is and How to Find It
- Tibet’s Tragedy: A Culture Teetering into Oblivion
- Weighing-in: Reflections on 2016
- Does the Electoral College Have a Future?
- Teach me to measure all my days
- Solace for the Hard Places: Jeffers, “Shine, Perishing Republic”
- You have every right to be afraid!
- Open the door and come right in….
- Introducing my hummingbird friends…
- Leap Frogging
- Live Longer Now
- On Reading Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch
- Revisiting George Eliot’s Middlemarch
- New England Memories
- Memorial Day: “Neither shall they learn war any more”
- Before Surgery Reading: Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small
- A favorite poem: William Carlos Williams’ “Spring and All”
- The war on cancer: New treatments lock-out most of us
- On finding a new booklist quarry
Author Archives: RJ
Love for All Seasons
“I hope that I will be the last victim in China’s long record of treating words as crime.” Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017) China isn’t usually a quotidian staple of the Westerner’s mindset. Let’s face it: our culture operates in Eurocentric … Continue reading
Posted in People, Poetry
Tagged "Morning", "Road to Darkness:, Liu Xiaobo, Liu Zia, People's Republic of China, Poetry
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Baseball’s Decline
Last night, the Cleveland Indians won their twentieth straight game, tying the 2000 Oakland A’s, an American League record. Win one more, and they’ll have tied the 1935 Chicago Cubs. Still, they have a ways to go for the all … Continue reading
The Left’s War on Free Speech
But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up … Continue reading
Reflections on the 2017 Philip Larkin Exhibition at Hull
The Guardian (July 4, 2017) features a review of a favorite poet of mine, Philip Larkin, in connection with a current exhibit of Larkin artifacts at Hull’s Brynmore Jones Library, where he was a librarian for many years. It notes … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Hull, literary criticism, Philip Larkin, Poetry, poets, Terry Eagleton
1 Comment
Perhaps Someday We Will Learn How to Live
Every morning I awaken to a country bristling with hate, intolerance, and violence. Trump bullied his way to the presidency, exploiting public anxieties, e. g., steel belt resentment of jobs sent abroad, latent fears of a changing demographic replacing White … Continue reading
Posted in Lifestyle, Politics
Tagged hate, Islamaphobia, Muslims, Southern Poverty Law Center, Trump
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America’s Unofficial Poet Laureate: Mary Oliver
Judging by her phenomenal sales, Mary Oliver surely rates as America’s unofficial poet laureate, and yet the anomaly that she’s never held the office since its inception in 1937. I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of her, despite … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry
Tagged MARY OLIVER, modern poetry, National Book Award, POET LAUREATE, Poetry, POETRY FOUNDATION, PULITZER PRIZE
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On First Looking Into Milford’s Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. –Edna … Continue reading
Sarah Teasdale: “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Am in a poetry mood again, which just shows you how subversive reading a poet’s biography can be (Nancy Milford’s Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay). In doing so, I came across Sara Teasdale, a once in-vogue … Continue reading
Is Mindfulness Warmed-over Buddhism?
Mindfulness meditation seems everywhere these days. Even the corporate world embraces it, e. g., Google, Facebook, EBay and Twitter. And in medical circles, it’s all the rage, particularly in psychiatry where it increasingly rivals pharmaceutical intervention as a primary therapy … Continue reading
She showed us the way: Reflections on Mary Tyler Moore
LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 08: Actress Mary Tyler Moore attends NBC’s taping of ‘Betty White’s 90th Birthday: (Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images) A few days ago we lost Mary Tyler Moore, not only an icon from the entertainment world, but … Continue reading
