Posts Tagged ‘reflection’
200 Posts in a Decade of Blogging: Part 2
October 24, 2018
I was invited to write for the Good Letters blog at its inception over ten years ago because of my long-time interest in writing about the experience of reading poetry: how the poetry I read becomes intertwined with my life, and vice versa. One such post, “This Solitude We Learn to Bear,” that reaches for…
Read More200 Posts in a Decade of Blogging: Part 1
October 22, 2018
This is my 200th post for Good Letters. There’s something about round-number occasions, isn’t there? They move us to reflection, which is what this anniversary has done for me. I’m recalling how Good Letters got started, and how our blog has developed since then. Late in 2008, several of us who’d been connected with Image…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Salt Wife”
May 18, 2018
Lot’s wife, or what’s left of her, stands in the barren wilderness outside Sodom waiting to trip up any who would skip merrily through the Old Testament, seeing God only as creator, provider, and oh-so-merciful father. It’s no wonder that so many poets—with their obnoxious preference for the prophetic—have invited her into their lines to…
Read MoreIn the Presence of My Enemies
May 10, 2018
I eat a pretzel in the presence of my enemies. (They have assembled in Charlottesville.) To be a man of men, I sip my whiskey neat in the presence of my enemies. (They march on the nightly news.) I present my failed masterpiece in the presence of my enemies. (The other painters in the juried…
Read MorePoetry at the Goodwill
April 5, 2018
When I was a soccer-obsessed fifteen-year-old, I had no use for poetry. I endured my school hours like a crated dog, waiting to get out on the field. One afternoon in the library, I picked up a random book of English verse and flipped through it. Eventually I landed on a song from Charles Kingsley’s…
Read MoreI Will Sing Your Praise
March 14, 2018
For a few years in the late 1990s, early 2000s, I brought a book of poetry with me whenever I went to synagogue for Shabbat morning services. After I was settled into my pew, I’d discreetly slip the book out of my tallis (prayer shawl) bag, tuck the thin volume of poetry inside the thick…
Read MoreHoly Snow
March 5, 2018
When we first decided to move to Minnesota, there were plenty of opinions. “You know it’s cold there,” people said. “Are you ready for all that snow?” they asked. “People literally die from frostbite all the time,” one family member swore. “You can get it just driving around in your car!” Now, we hadn’t spent…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Salt Wife”
March 2, 2018
On a tactile level, we are reminded of the common experience of salt in this poem by Amy McCann. How it cures and crimps, the taste of tears on your face or floating, mouth open and vulnerable, in the sea. We are also introduced to a complicated voice who describes herself as “The lick I…
Read MoreThe Spirituality of Sestinas
March 1, 2018
Several months ago, I found myself struggling with my hair—namely, snapping off my split ends in an obsessive manner, calling back to my teenage battles with trichotillomania. On some days, a half hour would pass before I realized I’d been zoning out and picking at my hair at the expense of folding laundry, writing, or…
Read MoreDissolving Borders between Self and Other
February 21, 2018
The Buddhists have four stations of the heart: Metta (kindness), Mudita (compassion), Karuna (joy in the joy of others), and Upeka (equanimity). The Jews have four matriarchs: Sarah, a mother who laughs and who does not speak when her husband takes her son before dawn to offer him as a sacrifice in the place God…
Read More