“Of course, you’re very conservative” Both sides of my family were lifelong Republicans, and approached their lives conservatively. By that I mean that they valued the contributions of the past to their current happiness, they took care to preserve their tools and other possessions (rather than throwing them out and buying new ones), they paid […]
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A poem is an equation written on the wind, riding on memory from one seer to the next, ancient as the spoken word. I can see the last of the species scribbling away in a feverish dream as the sun burns the ground, furnace in the lungs, every color flooding the mind, recalled in silence.
In the mid-1700s, natural phenomena were so poorly understood in the American Colonies that lightning was considered by many to be an indicator of God’s wrath. Accordingly, if lightning struck a house and caused a fire, neighbors often let the home burn to the ground because they figured this was God’s intention. Then in 1753
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In Book 19 of The Odyssey, Penelope recounts to a disguised Odysseus one of her dreams. In it, a great eagle swoops out of the sky and kills twenty geese she tends to, leaving her brokenhearted. The eagle tells her to be happy since he symbolizes the husband who will wreak vengeance on her suitors.
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In “Why I Continue To Write: Thirty-five years after Last Exit to Brooklyn,” Hubert Selby Jr. says of his youth, I went into the hospital in 1946, with advanced tuberculosis, and altogether I spent three and a half years in the hospital. By the time I got out I had had 10 ribs removed, one
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I wake With death in my mouth. Before I wash it out, I start with Ten reasons why I cannot take my own life. One–Suicide is selfish, Especially for you. You help so many people. What would they do Without you? Two–Who else Can make Algebra fun? All your students need you. Three–Who would get