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book review poetry quotations reading

Read!: Final Harvest by Emily Dickinson

This 1961 edition of a selection of Dickinson’s poetry was lovely — rewarding — and a lot: 321 pages of plot or argument draw a reader through, while 321 pages of poetry are probably meant to be sampled, not read cover-to-cover over a few weeks. I may have mentioned this before, but, if not, let […]

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quotations

Sweet Desire, Theme and Variations

As you may recall from earlier on this blog or elsewhere, C.S. Lewis writes about sweet desire: a hunger that is better than any other fullness, a sensation of miserable longing so beautiful that one feels compelled to recapture it and fails. In lieu of a longer post tonight, I thought I’d share two excerpts […]

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quotations writing

Skywatch

It’s like living in a clam, the sky is mother-of-pearl, bubbled rainbow relief, dizzy blue depthless depth of metaphor. The sky is light. My father once said that, since I was a writer and all, that he wanted to hear how I would describe a strange and glorious sky. Typically, I could think of nothing […]

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quotations writing

A Different Face

O why was I born with a different face Why was I not born like the rest of my race When I look each one starts! when I speak I offend Then I’m silent & passive & lose every Friend Then my verse I dishonor. My pictures despise My person degrade and my temper chastise […]