ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

January 2026

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Chief Joseph of the Nez Pearce by Robert Penn Warren

    “A strange land we wandered to eastern horizonsWhere blueness of mountains swam in their blue–In blue beyond name.” Robert Penn Warren is probably remembered more today as a novelist than as a poet. While it is true that he did win the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for his famous novel All the King’s Men, he actually Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Little Exercise” by Elizabeth Bishop

    Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) was born in Massachusetts but raised in Nova Scotia by her maternal grandmother. While she originally attended Vassar College with the intention of studying music to become a composer, she was reportedly terrified of performing and subsequently switched her major to English. Bishop is frequently described as a “poet’s poet.” Her work is characterized by Read more

  • MUSIC MONDAY: “They Say I look Like God” by The Real Ambassadors

    In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I want to share a song featuring Louis Armstrong today I just recently discovered when it was played on my local Jazz station, KBEM Jazz88. Here is some information I found researching The Real Ambassadors and this song in particular. The Real Ambassadors is a jazz musical developed Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “What Kind of Times are These” by Adrienne Rich

    Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was an American poet, feminist, and lesbian activist. Her early poetry, which was greatly admired by W.H. Auden, was quite formal. However, as she struggled with the repressiveness of the 1950s and patriarchal society, she broke away from formalism to free verse. She is one of the few poets I can think Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield

    Jane Hirshfield was born in 1953 in New York City. She is an ordained lay Zen Buddhist and a well-regarded translator; she is also one of my favorite contemporary poets. I have heard Hirshfield described as the poet of “presence.” Her work is often described as a bridge between the Western lyrical tradition and the meditative depth Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Lucille Clifton on Poetry

    Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language. -Lucille Clifton Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Woods” by Wendell Berry

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 25, 2011. On a cold November morning, I find myself dreaming already of spring. Winter used to seem merely a nuisance but as I have gotten older it has turned more and more into a Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

    At first blush, the marriage between Ovid, that most Latin of poets, and Ted Hughes would seem as unlikely a match as any you could imagine. Not in ability, of course, but in language and temperament. Hughes as a poet has always seemed to me one of the most earthy, physical, and Anglo-Saxon of all Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Evening” by H.D.

    On Sunday, I posted and reviewed a poem by the Imagist Amy Lowell. Today, I am going to be “reviewing” a poem by my other favorite Imagist poet, Hilda Doolittle, who published under her initials, H.D. H.D. (1886–1961) was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to a wealthy family and attended Bryn Mawr. A true Bohemian, she Read more

  • MUSIC MONDAY: Woody Guthrie – “All You Fascists Bound to Lose”

    Once again Trump/MAGA Fascism has murdered someone here in Minnesota: It is interesting how Minnesota and Minnesotans have been on the frontline of the long war against Fascism in this country since the Civil War. At Gettysburg, the 1st Minnesota captured the flag of the 28th Virginia Confederate Regiment. A symbol of victory of evil Read more