Literature and Reading Archive

I don’t know about you, but I spent all of last week glued to Twitter, following the manhunt in Boston, the explosion in West Texas and the earthquake in China. I knew the Pulitzers had been announced (and that this year’s board had avoided last year’s misstep in the Fiction category) but until this

A few years ago we took what my wife and I called our “Literary Road Trip,” and ventured into the homes of a lot of famous New Englanders, like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. (That’s a two-for, by the way, since their homes are next door to each other.) Emily Dickinson’s home was

How many snowflakes does it take to break a branch? I don’t know, but I want to be there to do my part if I’m a snowflake. —Sister Joan Chittister

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. —Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

It is almost impossible to look and read at the same time: they are different actions. —Gerard Unger, While You’re Reading

Richard Blanco has come suddenly to the forefront of American letters as a result of President Obama’s invitation to compose a verse for his second inauguration this week. I had to look up the poet, and was glad to find the full transcript of his long but melodious “One Today.” And in the serendipitous

November, the bringer of barren trees and wintry winds. For some reason the stark change of seasons in spring and fall tends to drive me back to poetry. So here are three poems that reflect the melancholic character of this penultimate month. November Night by Adelaide Crapsey This poem typifies Crapsey’s themes (influenced by

Written on the Sky: Poems from the Japanese Translated by Kenneth Rexroth New Directions, 2009 90 pages (paperback) Available Amazon Powell’s What art form distills images more succinctly and sweeps them away more devastatingly than poetry? Japanese poetry, especially the haiku form, is especially renowned for capturing the essence of a moment in just