Writing En Plein Air
Have you longed for the chance to sit outside and write while listening to the birds, smelling the sweetness of the grass and blooming trees, watching the beauty of the dancing trees, and feeling the…
Category: World Literature
What To Do/14
There was nothing to do but wait it out. My mind has to become accustomed to loneliness. And when one is alone there is nothing to do but study. — I.B. Singer, In My Father’s…
Svetlana Alexievich: Fascinated by People
Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Her oral history, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, appeared this spring in the US. Translated by Bela Shayevich, the book is a compelling…
Accept Loss Forever: Ono No Komachi & Izumi Shikibu
I am glad to have read The Ink Dark Moon, Jane Hirshfeld’s translations, with the aid of Mariko Aratani, of the Heian Court’s poets—Izumi Shikibu and Ono No Komachi. Several of Kerouac’s writing maxims came to…
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…