Category: World Literature

The Knight of the Mournful Countenance

“The calling that I profess,” replied DQ, “does not permit me to do otherwise.  An easy pace, pleasure, and repose — those things were invented for delicate courtiers; but toil, anxiety, and arms — they…

Let Emily Dickinson Reassure You

Dear Bella Levenshteyn Let Emily Dickinson reassure you– Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense — the starkest Madness — ‘Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail —…

An Ardent Reader’s Simple Request

From a young woman’s fan letter to Marcel Proust: And after three years of uninterrupted reading, my conclusion is this: I understand nothing, but absolutely nothing. Dear Marcel Proust, don’t be a poseur, descend for…

Zen Poem by Daniel Berrigan

How I long for supernatural powers! said the novice mournfully to the holy one. I see a dead child and I long to say, Arise! I see a sick man I long to say, Be…

A Little Pushkin Can Go a Long Way

My friend is assiduous in learning Russian Her son and daughter-in-law reside in Saint Petersburg She’s headed there in May She tells me she needs to get a book of Pushkin Memorize some of his…

Walt Whitman and Dear Layla

Dear Rebecca, Sarah, Matthew and Patrick, Joanie French and I took the Amtrak train to Texas in the summer of 2005 for a family wedding. Along the way and back, I read the Library of…

A Poem by Dom Pedro

for Claire At the end of the road they will ask me –Have you lived? Have you loved? And not saying a word I Will open my heart full of names. –Pedro Casaldáliga, Brazil

A Reader to an Author

“A whole world collapsed before my very eyes, but you, my favorite author, are bringing it to life again.” –Miriam, in I.B. Singer’s Meshugah

Western Civilization

The uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began in the spring of 1943 and lasted about twenty days. Of the thousands of Jews still in the ghetto when the uprising began perhaps a…