Category: World Literature

Note to Cami on Reznikoff

I read Reznikoff in summer of 2010 As much as I could find Used, at Amazon By him, about him I like his spare style That was the year I was generating a piece a…

The Good News, 3.8.2017

I once asked Mayuko and Minami (both in my fall 8 a.m. MWF Humanities class) if they had heard of Sei Shōnagon (清少納言). Of course they had!  They had read her years ago in school. …

The Good News, 3.7.2017

The  Good News is the radiance, wit, resilience, and hard-won wisdom of Elizabeth Quiros, with whom I was reunited today at RISE. I wonder: how many Share the Wealth evenings can she animate? How many…

A More Lively Mode

I read James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson in the summer of 1999. At the time I was gathering materials for what eventually became The Book of Mev.  The following passage from Boswell left its…

Take the Long View

I once wrote for a magazine:  I made a calculation, that if I should write but a page a day, at the same rate, I should, in ten years, write nine volumes in folio, of…

On Hope and Expectation

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords:  but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly…

Poem of the Day: Bertolt Brecht

Those who take the meat from the table Teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined Demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry Of wonderful times to come. Those who…