Category: Literature

Blood Blackened Boards The ladies of the Restoration Association replaced The parlor floor of Fredricksburg’s Kenmore Plantation During the 1920s when the preservation began, The guide, a genteel lady with softly graying hair, Told our assembled tour group. As the room had been used as a Civil War surgery, The boards had been stained dark […]

  In our busy times, the briefest pause to express a little interest in the natural world is praiseworthy. Most of us spend our time thinking about other people, and scarcely any time thinking about other creatures. I recently co-edited an anthology of poems about birds, and we looked through lots of books and magazines, […]

My heart is the heretic. Sometimes, sometimes a hush is louder than an infinity of funerals. Her silence coaxed men from their reptile skin. You should not know but you already do. Parlor of secret dancers. Woven sky webs. Raucous charioteers. The tip of a poisoned arrow is lodged in his heart. Burnished stars = […]

I’d guess there are lots of people, like me, who sometimes visit places which in memory are hallowed but which, through time, have been changed irreparably. It is a painful experience but it underlines life. Here Carl Little, who lives in Maine, returns to a place like that. The Clearing    The sunbox lies in […]

I’ve read dozens of poems written about the events of September 11, 2001, but this one by Tony Gloeggler of New York City is the only one I’ve seen that addresses the good fortune of a survivor. Five Years Later My brother was on his way to a dental appointment when the second plane hit […]

Because I’m a senior citizen I’m easily attracted by poems about my brothers and sisters meandering into their golden years. Here’s a poem by Edward Hirsch, who lives in New York, that offers our younger readers a look at what’s to come. Early Sunday Morning I used to mock my father and his chums for […]

When the judge said, “Will the defendant please rise,” this morning, for some reason I thought of bread. But here in criminal court there aren’t too many sweet rolls, just tougher loaves ready for baking in ovens like correctional facilities at Redgranite or Waupun. Gray stones, iron gates, steels bars make strange stoves whose doors, […]

She’d be a hundred next month but won’t see it. Aides will miss her sense of humor on the East wing; something to look forward to after bathing and dressing grumpy Ed in 106 each day. She lightened up the daily routine. Such great spirit in that tiny wren’s body, it didn’t take much conversation […]

Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens. One September Afternoon Home from town the two of them sit looking over what they have […]