I’ve published this post before, but I believe it’s worth an encore. Warning: it’s a bit gross. Norwegians have a word for the week between Christmas and New Year’s: romjula. The closest we have in English is the word Taint, meaning it ‘taint Christmas any more, but it ‘taint New Year’s either. I’m indebted to Rex… [Read More]
The Most Over-Hyped Time of the Year
Christmas is just over two weeks away, and the holiday spirit is growing on me. I haven’t posted here since August, and in the meantime I had a near-death experience. Literally: a subdural hematoma brought me close to death’s door, and I’m grateful to be alive. More on that later. But there have been past… [Read More]
Can my Blue Sky Day Designer get me organized in 2018?
I tossed off this poem yesterday afternoon so I’d have something new to read at the Caffe Lena open mic last night. The historic coffeehouse has been beautifully expanded and renovated, and it has a spiffy new lobby and an elevator that makes it handicap-accessible for the first time. Kudos to Carol Graser, who’s kept… [Read More]
Twelves ways of looking at Christmas Consumption
In my last post, I described using Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” as a stylistic model for creating an original poem. In my Alchemy of Creative Writing workshop series at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, I challenged the participants to write a poem in this format using the holidays as… [Read More]
Sunny and 75: a poem about my cheery outlook on life
I wrote this poem nearly two months ago on the day before my 76th birthday, and I hadn’t read it again till last Wednesday night, when I performed it at the Troy Poetry Mission, a monthly open mic at O’Brien’s restaurant in Troy. In mid-reading, I thought Jeez, this is pretty good, so I decided… [Read More]
In Memoriam: Windows on the World
Today I awoke to a beautifully cool, crisp September morning with a brilliant blue sky – a Tuesday morning very like the day sixteen years ago when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell. Like millions of Americans, I have vivid memories of that ghastly morning embedded in my brain – the endlessly… [Read More]