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A Poem for a Thursday #291
Everything Dorothy Parker wrote seems to be made up of witty remarks and quotable phrases. She was known for her “caustic wisecracks and eye for twentieth-century urban foibles.” I do not like my state of mind;I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.I hate my legs, I hate my hands,I do not yearn for lovelier lands.I dread the dawn's recurrent light;I hate to go to bed at night.I snoot at simple, earnest folk.I cannot take the gentlest joke.I find no peace in paint or type.My world is but a lot of tripe.I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.For what I think, I'd be arrested.I am not sick, I am not well.My quondam dreams are shot to hell.My soul…
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A Poem for a Thursday #290
The lovely thing about having featured a weekly poem for 290 weeks is that I have found some favorite poets. This comes in handy on days like today when I worked late and realized at almost 10:00 p.m. that I hadn’t written this post. Today I am going with a favorite I have featured several times before. Barbara Crooker is so good. I hope you enjoy this poem. GRIEF is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.But I am here, stuck in the middle, water partingaround my ankles, moving downstreamover the flat rocks. I'm not able to lift a foot,move on. Instead, I'm going to…
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A Mediocre Reading Year
I realize “mediocre” is not a ringing endorsement of my last year’s reading. After all, mediocre means “of moderate quality, not very good.” To be honest, that is a fair description of my entire year. Two surgeries and a back injury definitely put a damper on the year. However, I actually am happy with my mediocre reading. Some people might have decided that if they were going to be housebound for a large portion of the year then that would be the perfect time to read all the books they have been meaning to get around to. That is a perfectly valid life choice but it was not mine. I…
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A Poem for a Thursday #289
Joyce Sutphen served as Minnesota’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2021. The language of her poetry is simple and direct and thus pulls the reader into the wonder of the natural world and human experience. Sutphen’s poetry “explores themes of family, memory, and the passage of time, often grounded in specific locations and imbued with a quiet sense of wonder.” The second half of my life will be blackto the white rind of the old and fading moon.The second half of my life will be waterover the cracked floor of these desert years.I will land on my feet this time,knowing at least two languages, and whomy friends are. I will…
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Buy the Books
Last week my husband and I went out to lunch and to Barnes & Noble. We have been trying to go out to lunch for over a month, but our house has been germ-ridden since last month when I wrote a post about canceling our trip to Connecticut. It was a lovely afternoon. I puttered around the bookstore but didn’t buy anything and then had a good, though way too pricey, gluten-free burger. Life felt like it was returning to normal after the woe and doom that has filled our house. (Yes that is dramatic. Please, just let me have the drama.) Last night, at 1:30 a.m. I woke up…
