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Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
- Howard NemerovSparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn’t tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
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Third PlacesAmerican suburbs provide an excess of privacy, but deny proximity to those places upon which a community life depends.
Ray Oldenberg, The Great Good Place
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from Symmetries & Asymmetries - W.H. Auden
Could any tiger Drink martinis, smoke cigars, And last as we do?
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Loo ArtWell, yeah, I am. Thanks, mate.
Ange Postecoglou: “I’ve loved my first six months as head coach of this fantastic football club. We are still very much in the early stages of our journey. We have been moving in the right direction in terms of the squad, style of play, results. Hopefully, you are enjoying the team we are becoming.” ⚽️
Pitiable, foolish, and cruel, all at onceLouis Menand: “[Sontag] forbade her son to look out the window when they rode in a train; he needed to read about a place if he wanted to understand it. She never looked out the window herself.”
not so funny anymoreMike Godwin:
... has the sheer absurdity of so many hyperbolic Nazi comparisons in popular culture made us less vigilant about the possible reemergence of actual fascism in the world? I think it shouldn’t — comparisons to Hitler or to Nazis need to take place when people are beginning to act like Hitler or like Nazis...
We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore.
The Bloody Mary - Susan DonnellySunday in late December calls for one, with a celery stalk and faint taste of Worcestershire, to be sipped while eating poached egg and corned beef hash, in a hotel dining room with someone you love. Touch the hairs at his wrist as the warmth endorses all bed-lingering, non-churchgoing. It's the solstice, remember, when your frugal father would hand around dollar bills so the day would last longer. Stir ice into the rich red and consider such Celtic rituals, as you watch, beyond the tall windows, pilgrims traveling the paths past snow-fringed trees in the park.
Chores - Maxine KuminAll day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust out of the trailer truck into the chute. From time to time he’s clambered down to even the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust. Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff he says, stripping nude in the late September sun while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks. I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses burst through when snow avalanches off the roof. Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his, horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces. Fifty years married, he’s safely facetious.
No garden pump that’s airbound, no window a grouse flies into and shatters, no ancient tractor’s intractable problem with carburetor ignition or piston, no mowers and no chain saws that refuse to start, or start, misfire and quit.
But after a Bloody Mary on the terrace already frost-heaved despite our heroic efforts to level the bricks a few years back, he says let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
Christmas Mail - Ted KooserCards in each mailbox, angel, manger, star and lamb, as the rural carrier, driving the snowy roads, hears from her bundles the plaintive bleating of sheep, the shuffle of sandals, the clopping of camels. At stop after stop, she opens the little tin door and places deep in the shadows the shepherds and wise men, the donkeys lank and weary, the cow who chews and muses. And from her Styrofoam cup, white as a star and perched on the dashboard, leading her ever into the distance, there is a hint of hazelnut, and then a touch of myrrh.
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