April 1, 2001
Dying Fathers: ‘Stirrings Still’
For nearly half a century, the earnest sharp-nosed visage of Samuel Beckett, chosen mentor (though he likely never knew this), has been peering down upon me through his granny spectacles, […]
April 1, 2001
Imagination in Art and in Science
From the French. “Nothing but truth is beautiful,” states Nicolas Boileau in an epistle. “There is no truth but beauty,” Anatole France confirms in La Vie littéraire. And John […]
April 1, 2001
Down among the Women (Nobel Laureates)
In 1977 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, the founders of the Northern Irish “Peace People.” Just a year before, in August 1976, three […]
April 1, 2001
Walcott, Poet and Painter
I am lucky enough to have on my wall a painting by Derek Walcott, a watercolour about thirteen by fifteen inches in landscape format, dated 1988. People read the painting […]
April 1, 2001
On Brodsky’s Collected
“With all tenderness and affection” —from J. Brodsky to M. Harper; inscribed in Less than One: Selected Essays, October 12, 1988 Signature in a paperback arresting your copious […]
April 1, 2001
Last Poems 4
From the Bengali. March 26, 1941 Sun-heat drones this afternoon alone. A glance at the empty chair— there is no comfort in its breast full of words of despair, weeping. […]
April 1, 2001
Recovery 30
From the Bengali. February 16, 1941 (Afternoon) Dusk drops down slowly—bindings loosed one by one from the work-nets of hours. Day casts the west's opening portal into gold-luminous darkness, meeting […]
April 1, 2001
Birthday 8
From the Bengali. May 6, 1940 Ripping the breast off my birthday today, news of the death, leave-taking of a friend, has arrived. My own fire-grief burns— enkindles. On evening's […]
April 1, 2001
Last Poems 2
From the Bengali. May 7, 1940 Death-eclipse lowering shadows cannot devour life's sacred nectar into the clutches of matter. This I know for certain. No thugs live in earth's caves, […]
April 1, 2001
Dead Gallop
From the Spanish. From Residencia en la Tierra (1925-31) Like ashes, like seas breeding into themselves, in the sunken slowness, in the formless, or the way one hears from high […]
April 1, 2001
Desfina: An Chailleach Feasa
Cailleach: old woman, hag c. feasa: wise woman, fortune-teller Mount Parnassus placid on the skyline; Slieve na mBard, Knock Filíocht, Ben Duan. We gaelicized new names for Poetry Hill As […]
April 1, 2001
Pure Science: Marie Curie and the American Gift
Introduction by Wendy Singer “Changing the world, one woman at a time,” announces the American Association of University Women (AAUW) on its Web site. And in 1921 that woman was […]