Happy Holidays

I'm sorry that I've been MIA lately friends. Noah and I are headed to his family tomorrow. Hopefully, Off Hesperus can get in the swing of things again in the new year. In the mean time, here are my resolutions for the new year. And feel free to share yours.

1. Stick with the piano. And at least learn "Moon River" and "I Wish You Love"

2. Work on being more patient

That's all I can think of now, but I'm sure there are more things I need to work on.

This holiday season, I am grateful for my family, my wonderful children, friends like you and the roof over my head.

Follow Up: What I'm Reading

Stephanie writes:

Hey, Casey, Robin, and friends!

Thanks so much for your questions and comments! Sorry for the delay! And thanks so much for the book suggestions! I am trying to track down copies of all three at my library.

What I mean is that because men do not have reproductive rights (ie. they are not at liberty to walk away from pregnancies they do not want via abortion or adoption like women and they not entitled to pregnancies they *do* want if their female counterparts want to go through with an abortion). Feminist often toss it up to the fact that men and women are not equally situated biologically to value women's reproductive rights above men's and I think that's ironic to say the least and in a progressive modern society we ought to move beyond biological claims as a basis for human rights. I do NOT believe in compulsory pregnancy, but I do think there's something to the notion that men should *not* be forced into fatherhood in the same way that women should not be forced into motherhood. I am just looking at one branch on the tree of men's rights activism in America. But it's true that the family law system undermines fatherhood consistently. It should be the default set up when two people divorce that the mother and father get 50/50 child custody, but it's not. In 9 out of 10 cases women are awarded primary custody. And it's true that they are usually the primary caretakers in the family, but my feeling is that we need to stop overvaluing motherhood and undervaluing fatherhood if we want men to feel more invested in parenthood -- the crux of gender inequality in America, "on a cellular level" (to steal from a New Yorker article I just read by Ariel Levy) is the division of labor in the family. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand so I think its in our interest to give men more custody and reproductive rights or at least reframe the conversation so that their place in it is more central.

Anyways, thanks for your thoughts on all of this and your suggestions!

Sonnet LXXIII:That Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold

by Bill Shakespeare


That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Comment: A wonderful "autumn" sonnet I found on the Poetry Foundation's website. Autumn is so funny in Texas. It reminds me very little of autumn back east. The leaves change and the temperature finally relents a little bit, but it lacks the chill and crisp cool air of East Coast autumns. It's actually still warm and even a little bit humid here. I miss the crispness of falls back East, and of course, the color of the fall foliage.

I'm reading a recent biography of William Shakespeare called "Will in the World". Has anyone else read it? I'm really enjoying it. I'm learning all sorts of things about Shakespeare and Elizabethan England I should have learned ages ago. One fact that keeps popping up in my head is that paper was so expensive and scarce in England at the time, Shakespeare would not have been able to write his poems on paper as a boy. Can you imagine? The most gifted and brilliant writer of all time could not just jot a quickie down in a notepad when he was 14. And K and I use sheets and sheets of paper to stamp our hands on!!! It's really so wrong when you think about it. I have journals and journals of me whining about getting a bad grade or liking a boy and Shakespeare had to keep it all stored in his magnificent cranium.

Whitman Six Feet Under

Robin writes:

Hi Everyone,

My husband Matt and I recently started watching "Six Feet Under" on DVD (yes, we're a bit late to the party) and last night's episode featured a funeral for a woman who died alone, with no one to mourn her. She requested that the following lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" be read at her funeral service, and as the characters (and the audience) all together pondered that big question, What Happens When We Die?, these lines struck me as both beautiful and hopeful. My favorite line is the last. Here is the excerpt:

Walt Whitman "Song of Myself" lines 115-122:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed...and luckier.

What I'm Reading

Stephanie writes:

Hi Hesperus and friends!

I'm writing a piece on men's reproductive rights (or lack thereof) and how it's in the interest of feminism to grant men more reproductive rights. I'm researching the broader men's/fathers' rights movements and texts, such as Alec Baldwin's recent, A Promise to Ourselves and Jocelyn Elise Crowley's Defiant Dads: Fathers' Rights Activists in America, which have shed light on the multiple ways our family law system undermines fatherhood.

I believe that if men know their vote in the all-female government of reproduction doesn’t count for much, their stake in pregnancy (and consequently, parenthood) won’t be as high. This, in the end, hurts far more than it helps women. After all, who shoulders the heavier parental burdens? The pumped up demands on motherhood result, in part, from the short shrift given to men in the nine month preceding childbirth. In procreation (and child-rearing) fatherhood is regarded as mere accessory to the grand gown of motherhood.

Any thoughts on this? Any examples of the ways in which fathers are undermined in our culture?

I'd love to hear some of your thoughts!

Thanks so much for this forum, Casey, for discussing things!

Update--What I'm reading

Robin writes:

I am reading Portnoy's Complaint at the moment, a pick which was inspired by a comment on your blog a while back about your favorite books. I've always been curious about it ever since so I got it from the library last week. Lewd and hysterical -- I'm enjoying it. Lots of angst and agita. Prior to Portnoy, I just finished The Reader (troubling and beautiful) and also When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (which I enjoyed but not as much as Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go).

Alley Cat Love Song

by Dana Gioia

Come into the garden, Fred,
For the neighborhood tabby is gone.
Come into the garden, Fred.
I have nothing but my flea collar on,
And the scent of catnip has gone to my head.
I'll wait by the screen door till dawn.

The fireflies court in the sweetgum tree.
The nightjar calls from the pine,
And she seems to say in her rhapsody,
"Oh, mustard-brown Fred, be mine!"
The full moon lights my whiskers afire,
And the fur goes erect on my spine.

I hear the frogs in the muddy lake
Croaking from shore to shore.
They've one swift season to soothe their ache.
In autumn they sing no more.
So ignore me now, and you'll hear my meow
As I scratch all night at the door.

from Interrogations at Noon, 2001
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN

Comment: I love this poem. Charming in an effortless way. It made me smile. I found it in Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. You can find all the poems on the Library of Congress's website.

The Sum of a Man

by Norah Pollard

In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings—
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws—
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.

One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.

Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.

The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.

One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.

He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.

from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. © Antrim House, 2009.

Comment: This was the featured poem a couple of days ago on The Writer's Almanac. I was moved by its simplicity and accessibility. I actually really enjoyed it when the narrator simply says at the end how she feels, "this brother I loved." After talking about all the trivial material, banal things that make up our lives and how we see people, to sum up the essence of their relationship as one not made of objects, but love, really had an impact.

L is on my lap fascinated by the clicking noise I'm making with my fingertips!

I don't know if I've written about The Writer's Almanac before. A friend told me about it many years ago, but I only recently started listening online and reading the website. It's wonderful. It's hosted by Garrison Keillor and each episode is only five minutes long or so. Their archives are comprehensive and it's very easy to listen to a handful of shows.

Update: I have finally finished that motherf*&%#@! memoir!

And I really enjoyed it. I'm talking of course about Barack Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father. Although it took me FOREVER to finish the last third of it (in my defense and the book's defense it was interrupted by the birth of my daughter!), I really enjoyed the book. He was a surprisingly good writer and I identified with so much of his story I think it will stay with me. Whatever one's politics, I don't know how you could read this book and not like the man.

The Late Singer

by William Carlos Williams

Here it is spring again
and I still a young man!
I am late at my singing.
The sparrow with the black rain on his breast
has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past:
What is it that is dragging at my heart?
The grass by the back door
is stiff with sap.
The old maples are opening
their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.
A moon hangs in the blue
in the early afternoons over the marshes.
I am late at my singing.

From Sour Grapes, 1921.

Comment: Completely inappropriate that I am posting this poem about Spring right smack dab in the midst of Fall, but oh well. I love the simplicity of this. It's WCW at his best. Lyrical, succinct and full of feeling. The intimate and urgent voice of the narrator is very Whitman-esque.

Broadcast News

I just watched Broadcast News on AMC and here's my favorite line.

Tom Grunnick: What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?
Aaron Altman: Keep it to yourself.

The Gift

by William Carlos Williams

As the wise men of old brought gifts
guided by a star
to the humble birthplace

of the god of love,
the devils
as an old print shows
retreated in confusion.

What could a baby know
of gold ornaments
or frankincense and myrrh,
of priestly robes
and devout genuflections?

But the imagination
knows all stories
before they are told
and knows the truth of this one
past all defection

The rich gifts
so unsuitable for a child
though devoutly proffered,
stood for all that love can bring.

The men were old
how could they know
of a mother's needs
or a child's
appetite?

But as they kneeled
the child was fed.

They saw it
and
gave praise!

A miracle
had taken place,
hard gold to love,
a mother's milk!
before
their wondering eyes.

The ass brayed
the cattle lowed.
It was their nature.

All men by their nature give praise.
It is all
they can do.

The very devils
by their flight give praise.
What is death,
beside this?

Nothing. The wise men
came with gifts
and bowed down
to worship
this perfection.

Comment: I love the simplicity of this poem and its simple observation. I've been recently watching a lot of animal videos on National Geographic's website with K. He's really gotten into animals, especially marine animals. I'm learning all sorts of things that I never knew. The facts that always impress the most are the ones about the bond and relationship between mother and child. For instance, how walruses are tactile creatures and hug and cuddle in the same way we do. That their calves need that tactile affection. How a baby dolphin from day one knows to mimic its mother's every move to learn how to survive. That bond has to be so strong in order for the species to survive. Its so banal and but also extraordinary. Nursing, as WCW observes in this poem, is extraordinary in this same way. It is a gift. It's run-of-the-mill and biological, but it's also a small miracle. It reminds us that we are also part of nature and the age-old struggle to survive.

The God of Interruptions

"God is the name in which I designate all things which cross my path violently and recklessly. All things which alter my plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or for worse." --Carl Jung, The Red Book

Comment: Our UU minister, Daniel Kanter, used this quote in his sermon last Sunday. It really struck me. If you've ever had something really catastrophic or life-changing or even awe-inspiring happen in your life, this quote makes a lot of sense. These events, good or bad, change you. They deepen you. They wake you up and won't let you sink back into a daze. They make you think, "Am I prepared for this? Can I handle this?"

On another note, The Red Book is Carl Jung's never-before-published journal. It's supposed to be his journey into the unconscious. It spans 16 years. I know absolutely nothing about Jung, but this quote makes me want to know more.

Sendak on Sendak in San Francisco

Last weekend I went to see the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum. I am not aiming to review the exhibit here but to point out a few of the things that made me think. Like many people, I am a huge fan of Where the Wild Things Are and had read it cover to cover every night as a child. When I first encountered the book I read its Chinese translation, so it wasn't until many many years later when I saw the original English text and found it what Sendak's book really said.

But what the book "really said" isn't really what the text presents at all. A running theme in the exhibit was "The Other Story" - in the sense that Sendak's art told another story in addition to the text of the book. A lot of his "Other story" involved Sendak's Jewish heritage. Casey and I have talked at length about children's books and the ethnicity of characters in children's books. I never realized until I went to the exhibit that Sendak's Jewish heritage was such a huge part of his personal history and appeared in so many of his works.

Suffice it for me to say that you've got to go see this exhibit yourself. And about that movie? After spending the afternoon at the museum, I am wondering why it was necessary to make it into a movie or a New Yorker story at all.

p.s. If you are a fan of Sendak's art, check out the blog, Terrible Yellow Eyes, where other artists pay homage to him with their own work. One of my favorite pieces is this one called Best of All.

p.p.s. While I enjoyed the exhibit and the museum very much, I became ... disturbed and felt upset when I was entering the museum. We lined up to go through a metal detector and had to have our bags checked by some very nice security guards. Just like the airport, except the guards were much much nicer and you don't have to take off your shoes. The reason for this is obvious and one shouldn't be surprised that the Jewish Museum is the only museum in town requiring this security measure. But I found this upsetting because there were several young children in front of me and I thought, how do you explain this to kids?

What are we reading?

Just to get the conversation going again (I am a horrible blogger, I know)...what are we all reading and/or interested in at the moment?

I am reading a collection of Truman Capote stories. I probably won't read everyone of them, but I have always found with him that he seems most himself when he is writing about small town life in the south. The stories set there are his most affecting, in my opinion. In Cold Blood is a masterwork, and even though it wasn't set in the south, it's still about small town life and small town personalities and I think that's why his voice is so strong in it.

I have about 25 pages left of the Obama memoir. I don't know why I can't just finish it off. It's keeping me from moving on to other things!

I just read a great piece in The New Yorker about these gnostic gospels called the Codex Tchacos that were found in 1978 and tell a very different story about Jesus's relationship with Judas. It's amazing how the image of Jesus changes every time these new gospels are found. It reminds me of that funny bit in Talladega Nights where Will Ferrell refers to Jesus as "Baby Jesus". He just likes the image of Jesus as a baby. I guess Jesus really is in the eye of the beholder! He's like this enigmatic figure who has been depicted by all of these writers and no one will ever really know who he was. He's a reflection in a hall of mirrors.

So what are you reading, writing, interested in?

The House

by Richard Wilbur

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes

For a last look at that white house she knew

In sleep alone, and held no title to,

And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.

What did she tell me of that house of hers?

White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;

A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;

Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Is she now there, wherever there may be?

Only a foolish man would hope to find

That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.

Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

From The New Yorker, August 31,2009

Atul Gawande, "The Unlikely Writer"

I am reading a profile of Atul Gawande in the Harvard Magazine (random, I know) and found that he had some interesting things to say about writing. I know Gawande is a little bit off topic of a writer as far as our blog here is concerned, but I love the type of medical writing that he does. It is very...humanistic, touching, and a little like an investigative story every time.

Gawande saves his writing for the hours between 7 and 11 a.m. and 4 and 7 p.m. to "capitalize on the body’s circadian rhythms." I have a day job that kind of prevents me from doing this, but I would love to know what this "circadian rhythms" business has to do with my writing. Anybody?

The next thing that stood out to me was what Gawande has to say about writing:

Once a college sophomore with little interest in literature, Gawande now says he thinks in stories and feels a compulsion to write. In fact, he recommends that everyone do a bit of writing. “It makes no difference whether you write a paper for a medical journal, five paragraphs for a website, or a collection of poetry,” he said during a 2005 HMS commencement speech:

"…by putting your writing out to an audience, even a small one, you connect yourself to something larger than yourself….An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community, and also of concern to contribute something meaningful to it. "

I like the idea of this community, especially when so many writers see their craft as a lonely sport.

I am lame

I know I said I would memorize and record a sonnet...well, I didn't and I don't know if I'll ever get around to it. I seriously think, with age and wear, I have gotten worse at memorizing things. I tried, folks, I really tried. It was a worthy exercise in that it made me read that sonnet many more times than I normally would have.

The Americans

Alright, you lucky New Yorkers...Photographer Robert Frank's The Americans is now at the Met. The exhibit will be there until January 3rd. If anyone does go see it, please tell me how it was!

Check out this website

The Poetry Foundation has a great website.

There are lots of archived poems, articles, interviews and great functions like finding a poem by category, and a page for children's poetry.

Like the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation also has great poet bios. Here is one of Stanley Kunitz, author of the latest posted poem "River Road".

River Road

(photo by W. Eugene Smith)

by Stanley Kunitz

That year of the cloud, when my marriage failed,

I slept in a chair, by the flagstone hearth,

fighting my sleep,

and one night saw a Hessian soldier

stand at attention there in full

regalia, till his head broke into flames.

My only other callers were the FBI

sent to investigate me as a Russian spy

by patriotic neighbors on the river road;

and flying squirrels parachuting from the elms

who squeaked in rodent heat between the walls

and upstairs rumbled at their nutty games.

I never dared open the attic door.

Even my nervous Leghorns joined the act,

indulging their taste for chicken from behind.

A glazed look swam into the survivors’ eyes;

they caught a sort of dancing-sickness,

a variation of the blind staggers,

that hunched their narrow backs and struck

a stiffened wing akimbo,

as round and round the poultry yard

they flapped and dropped and flapped again.

The county agent shook his head:

not one of them was spared the cyanide.

That year of the cloud, when my marriage failed,

I paced up and down the bottom-fields,

tamping the mud-puddled nurslings in

with a sharp blow of the heel

timed to the chop-chop of the hoe:

red pine and white, larch, balsam fir,

one stride apart, two hundred to the row,

until I heard from Rossiter’s woods

the downward spiral of a veery’s song

unwinding on the eve of war.

Lord! Lord! who has lived so long?

Count it ten thousand trees ago,

five houses and ten thousand trees,

since the swallows exploded from Bowman Tower

over the place where the hermit sang,

while I held a fantail of squirming roots

that kissed the palm of my dirty hand,

as if in reply to a bird.

The stranger who hammers No Trespass signs

to the staghorn sumac along the road

must think he owns this property.

I park my car below the curve

and climbing over the tumbled stones

where the wild foxgrape perseveres,

I walk into the woods I made,

my dark and resinous, blistered land,

through the deep litter of the years.


From: Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (1995)"River Road" was originally published in 1966.

New York City, 1978 by Bernard Plossu

Comment: This is a really bad and blurry repro of the photo. It's a scan from a postcard. Still a great photo though. It has a great essence and composition. Photos of New York in the 70's are so rich and gritty. I know nothing about Plossu, although I'd like to know more based on this photo, but it's interesting that he is mostly a black and white photographer. I tried to get a monograph of his out from the Dallas Library system but they don't have anything by him. These books are usually so expensive to buy I like to check them out at the library instead. Does anyone know where else I might look (where I don't have to buy!)?

San Francisco, 1974 by Bernard Plossu

Crush

by Ada Limon

Maybe my limbs are made

mostly for decoration,

like the way I feel about

persimmons. You can’t

really eat them. Or you

wouldn’t want to. If you grab

the soft skin with your fist

it somehow feels funny,

like you’ve been here

before and uncomfortable,

too, like you’d rather

squish it between your teeth

impatiently, before spitting

the soft parts back up

to linger on the tongue like

burnt sugar or guilt.

For starters, it was all

an accident, you cut

the right branch

and a sort of light

woke up underneath,

and the inedible fruit

grew dark and needy.

Think crucial hanging.

Think crayon orange.

There is one low, leaning

heart-shaped globe left

and dearest, can you

tell, I am trying

to love you less.

originally published in The New Yorker

Comment: To come...too tired to write now, but will write more later...

A good laugh

Take the time to listen to this great story from This American Life. It will truly brighten your day or night. It's the first act of Fiasco! You know how we look at the Grand Canyon or listen to Al Greene and feels God's or the Divine's presence? Well, sometimes we are blessed to witness something truly funny. Like manna from heaven.

Okay, I forgot what Harold Bloom looks like...

Suddenly his writing is imbued with a funniness I don't think he intended...

Pick a poem, memorize it, post it!

So I spied Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why book on my shelves the other day. It was one of those paperback freebies I scooped up at S&S, but never really read. He gave some of advice on reading and understanding poetry:

I have arrived at a first crux in how to read poems: wherever possible, memorize them. Once a staple of good teaching, memorization was abused into repeating by rote, and so was abandoned, wrongly. Silent intensive rereadings of a shorter poem that truly finds you should be followed by recitations to yourself, until you discover that you are in possession of the poem. You might start with Tennyson's beautifully orchestrated "The Eagle":

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

If you memorize "The Eagle," you may come to feel that you have written it, so universal is the poem's proud longing.

So here's a project, ladies and gentlemen! Bloom goes on to talk about pre-modern poets such as Dickinson, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats and Shakespeare. He discusses Sonnet 144. I'm going to memorize this poem and if I get the nerve, I'll record myself reciting it and post it on the blog. Who would like to join me? Pick a poem, memorize it, post it. And even if you don't post it, memorize one. It's got to be good for the soul (and the brain!)

William Eggleston at the Corcoran

The William Eggleston exhibit, Democratic Camera, which was at the Whitney has now moved on to the Corcoran Gallery in D.C. NPR just did a piece on it and Eggleston. Once again I am envious of those who live near these world class institutions. I was only at the Corcoran once in college. It was a beautiful space and a beautiful building. Roman, if you get a chance, please go and let me know how it is!

Quote of the day

What lies behind us
and what lies before us
are small matters compared to
what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the land of utter exhaustion...

Hi all,

I think it goes without saying I haven't been reading much poetry lately. I'm three quarters of the way through Obama's first memoir, but fear I may not finish it. I really enjoyed it, but I just don't see myself returning to it. We'll see. I'm half-way through Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I've read The Tipping Point and his newest, Outliers. Some of his theorizing is a little simplistic, but overall I enjoy his books. He at least gives you something to think about. For instance, when I was watching the movie Doubt, I kept thinking about the whole premise in Blink of how we "thin-slice" information so quickly and even though we don't have years of experience and hours of observation, one thing we observe in a flash second can be revelatory and often dead on. I don't know if you saw Doubt or not, but Father Flynn is guilty, no? And the nun's only real reason for suspicion is a boy's reaction to being touched on the elbow by Father Flynn.

Anyway, I came across these fun dinner conversation cards in a store the other day and I'll throw one out there:

What's the habit you're proudest of breaking?

For me, off the top of my head, it's finally making flossing a habit. To me, that proves you CAN make things that are good for you but perhaps you don't like at first (jogging, going to bed early, reading The Economist, etc.) a genuine habit. But I guess I didn't really answer the question. Because it's about breaking habits...maybe I've never broken a habit???

Let's have a vote

What film do you think has the most memorable quotes? For me, it's Annie Hall. And the runner up is The Godfather. Thoughts? Here is a great quote from Annie Hall:

"There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

I was reminded of this fantastic quote because Woody Allen was recently interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. What do you think? Do you agree with misanthropic Allen?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
--Benjamin Button: [Voice over; letter to his daughter] From The Curious Case of Benjamin Button


Comment: Between playing with K, nursing the baby and trying to feed myself, I watched this long but highly affecting film. Now it could be my heightened emotional state, but I cried throughout the whole damn thing. I was particularly struck by Benjamin Button's advice to his daughter. It really struck a chord with me and I thought it was sound advice for a parent to give a child.

Food for thought

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
--From Asphodel, that Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams

Catcher in the Rye cover

This is one of my favorite covers, though I have to admit that I am one of the very few people that you will know who have not read the book. It's on my shelf, though, waiting.

The Evening Sun

This is a tough one to make out (maybe I'll scan it later instead of swiping it off of S&S's website). It's the cover of The Evening Sun by David Lehman. A wonderful collection of poetry, but the cover is also so striking. The painting is by John Sloan. He was sort of predecessor of Edward Hopper in the New York school of painting--part of that crowd that made the radical shift from painting pastoral, scenic landscapes to more urban settings. Because of this book cover, I discovered John Sloan and have a framed copy of "The City from Greenwich Village" above my desk. The cover designer, Alese Pickering, did a wonderful job marrying a beautiful image with the spirit of the book.

The Trademarks of Paul Rand: A Selection

Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art--Paul Rand

Great Issues in American History--Paul Rand

You CAN judge a book cover by its cover

I had the greatest little discovery last night. I was just glancing at my book shelves, thinking to myself, "Okay, some of these books have to go." There were old books from college, books I'll never read, books that are just there because I haven't found a way to unload them. In the past year or so I've gotten far less sentimental and territorial about my books. I used to like having lots of books around just so I looked like I had lot of books around, but now books I don't read or love just seem like excess weight and fluff. Clutter really.

Anyway, I was glancing at a shelf I haven't looked at in a while and saw an old book from high school that a friend gave me called The Condemned of Altona by Jean Paul Sartre. I noticed that I had only made it through half the play (I saw an old Septa ticket I must have been using as a book mark). Existentialism was probably a little too heavy for train reading (it probably still is) but what struck me the most was the fantastic cover art. I thought, "This is an amazing book cover."

Thanks to the power of the internet, I googled the cover and discovered the work of designer Paul Rand ( Born Peretz Rosenbaum). Known mostly for his industry logos like the one he designed for IBM, Rand was also known for his book covers and posters. Here are a few samples of his work. There is also a website dedicated to him that's worth checking out. I love his sense of color and shape. He was obviously influenced and and even pushing the envelope of the aesthetic and modernist movement of his time, but his work is also commercial and appealing. I wish book covers still looked like this!

If you have a favorite book cover, please share! As I was researching, I saw there were blogs out there about book covers (well, I only actually found one, but I am sure there are more). The internet is truly breathtaking in its reach and nerdiness.

Sorry if this post seems rushed. K is watching Sesame Street and I need to get dressed and have him dressed and then get out the door. It's all about not missing "the window"!

Helpless

by Neil Young

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

Comment: Whenever I hear this beautiful, mournful song I can't help but listen to the words. Isn't it funny how there are some songs where you never notice the words and others you can't help but? Maybe it's that certain words in the poem really catch a listener's attention like "north Ontario". How often do you hear that part of the world referenced? I also love "And in my mind/I still need a place to go,/All my changes were there." It's unexplainable how certain places live within a person's poetic memory. I haven't been to my childhood home in Pennsylvania for over five years now, but still whenever I dream of "home" I dream of my bedroom there. It's so locked within my psyche, that when I have a dream about seeing my parents again I never dream about their home in Boulder, I always dream about our house in Pennsylvania. It's strange how the details of my childhood bedroom are so vivid and second-hand.

I still wonder about the dirge-like chorus. What does he mean that he is left "helpless, helpless, helpless", in the face of these memories of nature and place? I'm not quite sure what it all means. Thoughts?

I love this song so much I've thought about trying to learn it on guitar, but there is a part of me that does not think I could do it a shred of justice. I'm sure countless people have tried to describe the unique nature of Neil Young's voice, but there is something about his delicate and fragile, falsetto-like warble combined with the lyrics that make this song poignant. Needless to say, my voice is nowhere near as expressive. It might be one of those songs that's better left to someone else to sing. And I'm just meant to listen.

If you actually want to hear the song, it was first recorded on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album Déjà Vu. I first heard it on a greatest hits album called So Far. I wish I knew how to upload sound files to the blog, but alas I do not. Also, we don't yet have this album downloaded. But you might be able to hear a sample free on amazon or elsewhere or you can always buy it from itunes.

Art

by Jack Meyers

Art
is a quality of attention,
the way color says how
light feels: yellow for the
aerosol of happiness, black
for the zero of what isn't;
the way light lined up right,
can cut through steel. Anything
is art if the mind's flawed right:
how soup feels being stirred,
how silence, broken open just so,
releases its essence and graces
the mind as a mint leaf in the air.

It's those who can't understand and
are dumbfounded by the obvious,
who thrive on on dissonance and
subverting the ordinary into the
extraordinary who end up being
artists. What good is that, you ask?
No practical use as far as I can see.
In fact, Archimedes could've been
bragging about art's uselessness when
he said "Give me a long enough lever,
a place to stand, and I will lift the earth."

Comment: Meyers is a Texas poet who was state laureate and now teaches at Southern Methodist University. I especially liked "Anything/is art if the mind's flawed right:/how soup feels being stirred/how silence, broken open just so,/releases its essence and graces
the mind as a mint leaf in the air./"

I have to admit...my grasp of classical references is very limited. I thought at first he was referring to Achilles and then realized Archimedes was someone different. In case of you are as classically challenged as me, Archimedes, who was Greek, was considered the greatest scientist/mathematician of antiquity. He also is regarded as developing the principle of the lever, as referenced in the poem.

The Hardest Question

by Chris Adrian
(essay taken from O's Big Book of Happiness)

How do you not abandon God when it feels as though God has abandoned you?

As a divinity student, I spend my time in a state of near perpetual confusion. I have not read a tenth of what my classmates have. Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher were the friends of their youth the way the Bionic Woman and Marie Osmond were the friends of mine. And my theological vocabulary, compared to that of my peers, is so impoverished as to make me practically a divine mute.

During my second semester, I took a course on literature and theology, and at one of the first few sessions I woke from a daydream to discover that my classmates were eagerly discussing The Odyssey. I panicked, figuring that even though for once I had done the reading, I had done the wrong reading. But when I fiddled in my notebook to check the syllabus, The Odyssey was nowhere to be found. I poked my neighbor at the seminar table, gently, in the rib. “We were supposed to read The Odyssey?”

“Huh?” she said. “What are you talking about?” When I'm not in class, I work as a pediatrician, and I noticed pretty early that though divinity school, like pediatrics, is full of large-hearted, patient people, during intense intellectual discussions my fellow students can get a little testy.

“Why are we talking about The Odyssey?”

“Not The Odyssey,“ she said. “The Odyssey. Leibniz. Bayle. Polkinghorne. Those guys.”

“Oh,” I said, but she could tell I was still confused, so she wrote the word on my notebook, which was blank except for a half-finished doodle of a pony.

Theodicy.

“Oh,“ I said, as if I recognized the word. The class discussion moved on without my ever deciphering what exactly they were talking about—everyone lamenting the problem of theodicy without ever saying what it was—so I walked to the library after class to consult the dictionary and discovered that, like anyone who has ever felt afflicted by existence, I was already familiar with the concept, if not the word. It means an attempt to reconcile a God who is thoroughly and supremely good with the undeniable fact of evil in the world. It was as strange and embarrassing as the episode in class had been, to stand there and learn a word I suddenly felt I should have known all my life.

You don't have to have your cookies stolen in kindergarten too many times before you start to perceive that all is not right with the world. My cookies were stolen so often that I learned to offer them before they were demanded; my tormentor was a girl whose name I have long forgotten but whose face, round and sweet and utterly at odds with her dreadful disposition, has remained with me forever. I was raised Catholic, but was at that age more a dreamy little pagan, and it was indicative of my particular brand of religiosity that I prayed to Big Bird and not to Jesus to deliver me from my freckled oppressor. When nothing changed, I continued to believe in Big Bird, but I gave up on the notion that he cared very specifically about what happened to me.

The Value of Perseverance

As I became an older child and then a teenager, and dogs died and family members died and did not return to life no matter how hard I prayed to alter the fact of their death, I reconciled miserable reality with faith in an all-powerful and entirely benevolent God by telling myself that it wasn't that God didn't care to intervene, or didn't have the power to—my grief was just too particular to attract his attention. And as I grew still older and began to notice that we are accompanied throughout history by all sorts of unspeakable suffering, I amended this view, too, telling myself that the sum of these miserable parts must add up to something I could never apprehend while alive, and that although the fact of evil in the world might speak against God's scrutability, it said nothing about his existence or beneficence. But the older I became, and the more unhappy a place the world revealed itself to be, the more difficult it became to accept the idea of a personally invested, personally loving God.

Most days it's not the most pressing question in the world—how God can be good and allow terrible things to occur. It's when something really bad happens to you, or collective cataclysm descends, or some really wretched piece of news falls out of the television or slithers from the papers that this question that has vexed generations becomes all of a sudden quite present and personal. I would venture to guess that there are certain obsessive sorts of personalities who dwell on it even on sunny days and during Disney ice shows (maybe even especially during Disney ice shows), but for people with certain jobs—theologian, divinity student, vice detective, physician—it becomes a professional hazard. By the time I got to residency, I understood that I needed to come up with an answer to the question people kept asking when I told them I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist: “How can you stand to work in a field where you see such terrible things?”

I did see terrible things, but in fact it was those terrible things that seemed to enable me to get up and go back to work every day. If the parents and children who were actually suffering with the illnesses could be as gracious as I discovered them to be, the very least I could do was get myself back to the hospital to be with them as they labored through the process of getting well or dying. Sometimes it seemed that the failure of drugs or technology reduced the practice of medicine to a ministry of accompaniment. I say reduced, but you could argue that it's an elevation of our practice as physicians. I came to divinity school largely because I thought the experience and education would make me better able to accompany patients into their adversity, and I think I'm in the right place for that. But it turns out that I have already learned things as a doctor that make me if not a smarter divinity student, at least a less agitated one.

Fate and Faith

Every parent and child I meet who overcomes or succumbs to illness is challenged to reconcile their fate with their faith in the goodness of the world. They never reason or parse like theologians, and by no means do they all express a faith in any kind of God, but they all find strength and will to wake up every day to a job tremendously more difficult than mine. A child complains one morning at the breakfast table of numbness in one arm, and then collapses from a catastrophic cerebral bleed (or pulls a steaming rice cooker down upon her head, or rides a scooter headfirst into a speeding taxi), and a parent's world suddenly collapses. It's a privilege and a burden to be witness to other people's tragedies, to watch them proceed from stunned disbelief to miserable acknowledgment to stoic acceptance and then beyond to the place I can't quite enter myself, a place in which they are both fully aware of how completely horrible life can be and yet still fully in love with it, possessed of a particular buoyancy of spirit that is somehow heavier than it is light.

I can't say if I believe in the God who knows us and cares for us down to the last hair of our head, and so I don't feel obligated to reconcile such a being with the ugly facts of the chromosomal syndrome trisomy 13, or teenage myelogenous leukemia, but I am pretty sure one need look no further than people's responses to adversity to find evidence that there is something in the world that resists tragedy, and seeks to overturn the evils of seeming fate.

The last and least of my professions, after physician and student, is fiction writer, and I'd like to think that the little tragedy-resisting organ in me is the one that generates stories. They are ghastly, depressing stories for the most part, about ghosts, and zombies, and unhappy angels managing apocalypses, and people attempting to bring the dead back to life, but they are a great comfort to me. I write fiction mostly to try to make sense of my own petty and profound misery, and I fail every time, but every time I come away with a peculiar sort of contentment, as if it was just the trying that mattered. And maybe that's the best answer to the patently ridiculous problem of trying to reconcile all the very visible evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a God who is not actually out to get us: We suffer and we don't give up.

Chris Adrian's second novel, The Children's Hospital, was published by McSweeney's. He is a pediatrician and divinity student in Boston.

Comment: Okay. I know what you're all thinking: Casey has lost the plot. Yes, I did check out "O's (as in OPRAH) Big Book of Happiness" from the library. I've gotten acquainted with O Magazine sitting in waiting rooms and have come to appreciate it. It's very essay-driven and is all about living "your best life." Although this seems commercial (the great O has trademarked the phrase and all), it's as good a mantra to live by as any, no?

Anyway, I really enjoyed this essay because the end made sense to me. It still hasn't completely convinced me that God is good or even that there is a God, but it points out a truth: in the face of insurmountable tragedy people do try to survive with grace and dignity and meaning. We are more than just cells and function. We not only try to preserve our bodies and our mere survival, we try to preserve our spirit. We know instinctively that if our spirit dies, then the rest is dust as well.

Also, I am in awe of people who choose careers like pediatric oncology. It's like facing your worst fears and demons every day. But thank goodness there are people who have the courage to do it. I don't know where they find the strength and the fortitude, but I am grateful for it.

Oh, how I wish I lived in San Francisco...

(photo by Stephen Shore)

E,

You have to go to this fabulous exhibit at the Fraenkel Gallery for all of us. The exhibit is called “Edward Hopper & Company”. It illustrates how Edward Hoppers paintings influenced later 20th century photographers like Walker Evans and Stephen Shore. I'm intrigued by this idea because Hopper is one of my favorite painters (the Off Hesperus logo is a Hopper painting called "House at Dusk") and lately I've been reading a lot about photographers from the 60s and 70s like Stephen Shore, William Eggleston and Robert Frank. It shouldn't surprise me that links have been made between the two aesthetics. People are probably drawn to Hopper in the same way they are drawn to these photographers.

Just drawing a quick comparison between Hopper and Stephen Shore, they both focus on mundane settings and ordinary people. The subjects in their work (whether it be a person or a building) seem lonely and abandoned. And yet while desolate, there is a beauty in the desolation. The penetrating late afternoon sun on a a city building, lonely people sitting at a bar late at night, a pancake breakfast for one at a roadside diner. These are sad, indelible images.

E! I might have to make a return trip to San Francisco!

Sunday Morning

("Early Sunday Morning" by Edward Hopper)

by Wallace Stevens

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

V

She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.''
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Comment: Oh, Wallace Stevens! Why must you write such doozies? I've only read through this a couple of times. It's a poem I've never read before but it intrigues me because it is about belief". And I'm pretty sure Stevens was an atheist. Does anyone know what he means by "serafin"? Anyway, I write more on this later, but wanted to post to get further thoughts if anyone had any. I've been on the hunt for really great "nature" poems. I know they seem a dime a dozen in poetry, but if anybody has a particular nature poem they love, please post.

My Life's Calling

by Deborah Digges

My life's calling, setting fires.
Here in a hearth so huge
I can stand inside and shove
the wood around with my
bare hands while church bells
deal the hours down through
the chimney. No more
woodcutter, creel for the fire
or architect, the five staves
pitched like rifles over stone.
But to be mistro-elemental.
The flute of clay playing
my breath that riles the flames,
the fire risen to such dreaming
sung once from landlords' attics.
Sung once the broken lyres,
seasoned and green.
Even the few things I might save,
my mother's letters,
locks of my children's hair
here handed over like the keys
to a foreclosure, my robes
remanded, and furniture
dragged out into the yard,
my bedsheets hoisted up the pine,
whereby the house sets sail.
And I am standing on a cliff
above the sea, a paper light,
a lantern. No longer mine
to count the wrecks.
Who rode the ships in ringing,
marrying rock the waters
storm to break the door,
looked through the fire, beheld
a clearing there. This is what
you are. What you've come to.

Comment: Poet Deborah Digges committed suicide last week. I had
never heard of Ms. Digges, but after reading her obituary and a few
of her poems I would like to learn more. Poet Sharon Olds was asked
to name a personally meaningful book of poetry and she named 
Digges' last book of poetry Trapeze. I'm sorry to be posting all of
these morbid suicide notices (note to self: a disproportionate number
of poets either off themselves or live VERYtroubled lives), but on the
bright side these gifted people live on in their work. Digges also wrote
two memoirs. Fugitive Spring is about her childhood in Missouri,
growing  up one of 10 children and The Stardust Lounge is about
her relationship with her teenage son.

I'm struggling with the middle of the poem:

The flute of clay playing
my breath that riles the flames, 
the fire risen to such dreaming 
sung once from landlords' attics.
Sung once the broken lyres, 
seasoned and green. 

I've read this over and over again and can't really picture or
comprehend what the poet is saying and how it relates to the
rest of the poem. What are "landlords' attics"? And why would
she say "flute of clay"? Is that literally the same as "clay flute"?

But the finale of the poem is quite fantastic. She marries
everyday things you can picture instantly like locks from her
children's hair with the dramatic sea/cliff imagery.

Ode on Melancholy

by John Keats

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty -Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine:
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Comment: Today I’m bringing us all back to high school English class with a John Keats submission. (Perhaps a double-dip into the the "black waters of Lethe" after Casey's Ginsberg poem!) However, the reason I thought of it was the line, a “wealth of globed peonies,” which appeared in a novel by Debra Weinstein a few years back, and which always returns to my mind this time of year when the peonies start to bloom. I’ve heard “peony” is a Chinese flower whose name means “most beautiful.” To me, it is indeed the most beautiful of flowers, but I’m also struck by how short the blooming season lasts. Beauty wrapped up with sorrow, forever joined as in Keats’ poem. Enjoy!

(posted by Robin R.)