December 2024
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Vengeance is the Spur, by Harry Whittington, is a “Cowboy & Indian” story. Captain Sam Marshall does not want war with the Apaches. He is trying to find a peaceful solution. But Washington D.C. relieves him of his command and sends a by-the-book Major (and, of course, his beautiful daughter) to take charge of the situation. Read more
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I first read Ross Macdonald in the late 80s or early 90s, after reading a lot of Hammett and Chandler. It was a natural progression. For as many have pointed out, Macdonald perfected the hardboiled detective genre that Hammett invented and Chandler made literarily necessary. The protagonist of Ross Macdonald’s Southern California Noir work is Read more
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“Were it not for coffee one could not write, which is to say one could not live.” — Honore de Balzac Read more
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I have always thought of Denise Levertov as intimidating. Looking back at a volume of her poetry I am not completely sure why that is. At first glance, she does not seem anymore or less accessible than a dozen other poets I can think of. And yet she does intimidate. Theology and philosophy are constant Read more
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Each morning as I stand at my desk writing, I have a companion, sometimes two. I cannot imagine writing now without having a cat with me. A cat is the perfect companion for a writer. Because the literary relationship between cats and writers is such a natural one, it is not surprising to discover that Read more
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“…there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.” ~W.H. Auden When I was in college, I had to make a choice one semester between taking Romantic Literature or Victorian Literature. Knowing just enough about everything to get myself into trouble, I chose to take Victorian Literature. Romantic Read more
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“I don’t even glance at the herbal teas, I go straight for the real, vile coffee. Jitter in a cup. It cheers me up to know I’ll soon be so tense.” — Margaret Atwood Read more
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For close to 30 years, I have had a habit of writing, editing, and rewriting just about everyday: poetry, journaling, fiction, and blogging. I go through phases where I will send some of it out to contests or for publication. Occasionally I have had someone choose to publish something I have written. These are featured Read more
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Robert Frost is the most American of all American poets. He is American in subject, sound, and sensibility. It is his great strength and his greatest weakness. While Whitman’s propheticness transcended his American-ness, Frost can make no such claim to a transcendent universality. In the end he remains Poet Americanus. That is what makes this volume of essays Read more
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Segmenting time, or periodization, is something we have to do if we want to organize the past and give it meaning. But it’s dangerous. By choosing some dominating event and saying that its period starts here and ends there, we run the risk of neglecting other events that don’t fit well into the scheme we’ve Read more
ClimbingSky 