You know that feeling when you speak a fragment of a poem, the same one you’ve mentioned a thousand times before, but this time instead of you being the only one who knows it’s a poem and not a throwaway phrase you are with the friends who know the poem and see why you are […]
Dear friends, I could not read the just-released New Day’s Lyric from Amanda Gorman aloud without tearing up, so I know this is the best offering I can share with you this morning. And to extend the sharing, our new winter book list is linked at the end. May this shiny new year bring greater […]
Sometimes I come across a new poem in an old book of favorites and it beams forth, saying, this one, now. I love how this form and language of this blessing from John O’Donohue mirror the essence of the ideas he’s conveying – heavy at first, then sad, then quiet, and then, at last, lighter. […]
Don’t just do something, stand there! Jack Bogle Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver This was a tough week for loss – both the poet Mary Oliver and the investor Jack Bogle. At first glance these seem like people who had little in common: Oliver spent her days in the […]
You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. – Dr. Maya Angelou Longtime Honeybees will know of our appreciation for the work of Brené Brown, speaker of […]
Autumn equinox is a curious turning – a quiet, muted shift. In spring we rejoice that the long winter is nearing its end, and at the solstices there’s an expansiveness, either of endless day or burrowed-down night. But autumn, alongside the abundance of harvest, brings the promise of darkness to come. The plenty right next […]
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? Mary Oliver’s new collection Upstream has sent me spiraling back through her prior work. Fans will know the line above at a glance – it is from the stellar Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches, pasted in entirety below, with all […]
Help, head. Help heart. One of the joys of sorting through bookshelves is coming across old friends. This week I re-met Maira Kalman’s terrific My Favorite Things, which features the equally terrific Lydia Davis’ poem, Head, Heart. Stopped me in my tracks. Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart that’s how […]
This week I have read several thoughtful articles with advice for bloggers, all urging focus and thematic clarity (rightly so). But today I am writing not about investing, but about poetry, experts and editors be darned. Because Seamus Heaney’s work has helped me more than all of those blogger-advisers put together. Because poetry is one […]