“What Dreams May Come”

These passages, with their rich imagery and their unerring rhythmic ebb and flow, are among the most moving and complex speeches in our literature. But it is the soliloquy in the third act, “To be…

“Words Words Words”

Indeed, the very use of the word “revolution” is suspect because every historical event that people want to invest with drama and importance is given the honorific title “revolution.”  –Avishai Margalit, Views in Review: Politics…

For Sure

Surely there can be nothing to distinguish us from the beasts, if we simply devote ourselves to greed and never turn our hearts to the Buddhist truth.—Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness What is a man,If…

Memorable Scenes

It has been said of the play “Hamlet” that its best scene is the one in which Horatio first sees the ghost, or the one in which he tells Hamlet of it, or the one…

He Contains Multitudes

[Hamlet] inherits the virtues of a score of his predecessors–and some of their weaknesses. Yet he is no mere recapitulation of them. In him, rather, they recombine to make a man as individual as he…

Darshan

The Power of a Photograph In the last couple of years I’ve read whatever books I could get my hands on Whose subject is Sri Anandamayi Ma (Her parents gave her the name Nirmala Sundari…

The Good News, 3.3.2017

The Good News is … In 2016 Lindsey Trout Hughes took three on-line writing classes with me, and—to her surprise and my delight— embraced her poetic vocation. She has graced me with  epic emails, and scintillating…

When Hamlet Saw Sri Anandamayi Ma

What an uncanny phenomenon is this woman! How penetrating in perception! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!…