Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) “achieved a level of national and international prominence previously unequaled in the literary history of the United States.” What American schoolchild has not read “Paul Revere’s Ride” or “Hiawatha”? Longfellow also gave us this gem: There was a little girl,             Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead.              When she was good,              She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid. No, that is not your poem for today. Longfellow was one of the few American writers to be honored…

Four years ago this week I started this blog. Four years of taking photos of books, talking about books, writing rambling posts about my random thoughts, and being constantly surprised that people take the time to read and comment. I’ve frequently thought I had nothing to say and then found that once I start typing the words are there. I’ve learned a lot about blogging and photography; just enough to know how much I still have to learn. I’ve discovered that I actually like poetry and I have expanded my reading horizons by reading other people’s blogs. Most people in my everyday life don’t know I have this blog. I…

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash Sylvia Plath was an American poet and novelist. Her poems are autobiographical and focus on her own emotions and sense of despair. Joyce Carol Oates wrote of her poems that “many of them written during the final, turbulent weeks of her life, read as if they have been chiseled, with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice.” Plath took her own life when she was thirty. Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries, Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries Big as the ball…