In November 1962, Stevie Smith received a letter from “an addict…a desperate Smith-addict.” The importunate admirer inquired as to how she might get hold of Smith’s elusive first novel (having just completed her own) and hoped to arrange a meeting “over tea or coffee” in London, where she was planning to move in the new…
Shannon Airport was empty at 8:30 in the morning, just twenty of us stumbling off the red-eye from Toronto. A few dark-jacketed employees leaned on brooms to watch the fatigued arrivals. One pointed me to the bus for Limerick, where a small, gray-haired man waited. “I’m going to Shannon View Farm,” I said, “Will you…
In the dim forest cabin, a brown bear stared at me. He sniffed my suitcase. I froze. The bear looked at me with his deep black eyes. We gazed at each other. No longer afraid of him, I felt a close connection. I watched as he explored the small, rustic room, pawing at the door…
We use them every day. Across intersections, white stripes stitch together seams of foot traffic. The ubiquitous stripes signal pedestrian paths that network our built environments. Often called “crosswalks,” these pedestrian crossings have evolved over the years to curiously accrue animal names like zebra crossings, panda crossings, pelican crossings, toucan crossings, and puffin crossings. To…
They come arching over the horizon from distant places, like bent, crooked arrows dispatched from many directions. They arrive in thin blue envelopes on folded stationery, or in fat, feverishly duct-taped packages. By overnight mail—sent prepaid by Fed Ex—($26.00!)—containing, say, three little misshapen onyx pebbles, which, I am told, should be placed in the corner…
When my parents died, I inherited all of their photographs and papers as they had inherited their parents’ photographs and papers and so on back a few generations. Things came to me chaotically: in old shoe boxes and albums and scrapbooks, in envelopes and baskets and shopping bags, in emptied kitchen drawers. This summer, I’ve…
Jack sat pondering his father, and there was something in his face more absolute than gentleness or compassion, something purged of all the words that might describe it. — Home, Marilynne Robinson 2. Genesis: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 3. My father is…
Campbell McGrath, Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems (Ecco Press, 2019)
Tess Gallagher recommends Poems of Repossession: Leabhar na hAthghabhála edited by Louis De Paor, Irish-English Bilingual Edition (Bloodaxe Books, 2016). “This book of Irish poems in translation carries some very strong poems, [including] one by Seán Ó Ríordáin called ‘Switch,’ which is the central mandate for empathy—a poet’s main tool. Also, one may read what…
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