Leaving No Room
The Wisdom of the Arabs Compiled by Sheila Bushrui Oneworld Publications, 2002 Here lately, friends and I have been reading and discussing the wisdom of the Stoics as well as St. Francis and His Companions….
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Share the Wealth Sunday 7 March: A Celebration of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
Dear Friends, Please join our gathering as we share representative works of the San Francisco poet, painter, provocateur, and publisher, whose A Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of…
Share the Wealth: Francis of Assisi
[T]oday it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent. —Simone Weil #1 A Prayer Lord, make…
Ferlinghetti Florilegium
endless the ever-unwinding watchspring heart of the world shimmering in time shining through space as if they were watching some odorless TV ad in which everything is always possible Where are Whitman’s wild children, where…
Uncancelable
Colin Irwin, Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited New York : Billboard Books, 2008 Legendary Session 1. You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books… And dropping a barbell he points to the sky saying,…
“What a Community!” Reading The Book of Mev by Jean Durel
My friend Jean sent me the following… Have so loved The Book of Mev — even though my heart was breaking at times and tears were streaming down my face. Of course I knew the end,…
A Question from Lynda Barry
Emily Dickinson wrote at least 1,700 poems. Why? –Lynda Barry, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor
Lines Written on the Back of a Wangari Maathai Postcard by Katja
I remember cookies crumbs on 6 North Coffee tables I remember the banishment of “should” I remember Being Peace I remember blue-lined notebooks I remember Natalie Goldbergisms I remember writing outside the margins I remember…
The Good News of Translation
1. Thanks to __________, I Was Able to Read_______’s _________ [Language] Richard Fein, Yankev Glatshteyn, Selected Poems [Yiddish] Hillel Halkin, Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman [Yiddish] Nili Wachtel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Meshugah [Yiddish] Martha…
Dirda in Threes
RULE TWO: General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students. —Sister Corita Kent Michael Dirda, Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments Indiana University Press, 2000…