Ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify...
Little Brother In the late afternoon the blue room fills with languid light. Three little girls stand round while in Mother’s arms the new baby stills his little cries, that new strange squalling sound. Mother gazes down at her well-wrapped son He’s...
(An off the cuff reflection on Sunday’s Readings.) “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great… that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.” ...
Today I’m thinking about quarantine and cultural memory. On our road trip to Pennsylvania we listened to Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome. In the novel the children we met in Swallows and Amazons, the Walkers and the Blacketts, are enjoying a post...
Stumbling Stone Not really a stone. A little bronze plate the size of a cobblestone, flush with the pavement. No one could trip over it except the way the eye catches on something bright and the mind cannot let it go, that idea that stays with you...
On Wednesday we got up and had another camp breakfast of eggs and bacon. Taking time to cook breakfast and do the dishes after did mean that we didn’t hit the road until after 9. So we didn’t much escape the heat. We picked up at Little Round Top...
Room in Brooklyn High above the world, where the street sounds can’t hardly reach, her window with its lopsided shades looks over the rooftops where the clustered chimneys gaze back at the woman who sits so cozy in her wooden chair, now looking at...
“There’s this rich old man with lots of enemies, and it turns out that someone has bashed his head in. The police have to figure out which of his three sons is responsible for the murder, and so they arrest the oldest son (who’s at a drunken party...
On Tuesday we had a camp breakfast: bacon, eggs, and bagels toasted in the bacon fat. After breakfast we headed to the Gettysburg National Military Park visitor center. The park itself is quite large, comprising the battlefields that almost surround...
We were supposed to have gone to Gettysburg last September on our way home from my family reunion in Kentucky. But Ben, who’d been fighting a cold since we left Massachusetts, developed an ear infection in the Smoky Mountains and was in serious pain...
