ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

DAILY BLOG

  • BOOK REVIEW: “The Usefulness of the Useless” by Nuccio Ordine

    “…those who erect walls, as Jorge Luis Borges reminds us, can easily have books burned.” Written in 2013, Nuccio Ordine’s “little masterpiece” The Usefulness of the Useless is filled with Post-Trump aha moments like the quote above. It also dovetails into a debate being waged in the universities and colleges of America even as I… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Deadheads

    Once, about a decade ago, my daughter Dylan sent me an out-of-the-blue text asking me if I were a Deadhead. I told her at that time that I was not sure since I had only seen the Dead in concert once and The Jerry Garcia Band twice. In my mind, Deadheads were those people who… Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “Another” by Hayden Carruth

    Poetry moves on a pendulum of influence, between nature and the political (Poetry of Beauty/Poetry of Justice). A few great poets like Yeats can inhabit and influence both dialectical poles, moving from pole to pole one poem at a time. Most poets are most comfortable, most at home, toward one end of the long pendulum swing or the other. A prolific… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Storm” by Kate Chopin

    “The Storm” is a short story by Kate Chopin that takes place in the 19th-century American South. It’s a sequel to “At the ‘Cadian Ball” and explores themes of desire, passion, and the transformative power of nature. Though not published in Chopin’s lifetime, it was included in “The Complete Works of Kate Chopin” in 1969.… Read more

  • POETRY REVIEW: “In Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti

    After a brown Christmas, winter has come again to the North Country. The past two winters have not been the kind of winter we are used to here in the North Country. Though it is difficult today to say what a “typical” winter in Minnesota really is now, deep snow is what remember. Climate change… Read more

  • Hardboiled Java

    “Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple mugs of good black java to bring me around.” (Spillane, Mickey. My Gun is Quick.) Read more

  • Poetry Review: “The Poet and the Bird” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a great influence on Emily Dickinson. Not, of course, in language or style but more in temperament. Certainly the wordiness of Barret Browning bears little in common with the spareness of a typical Dickinson poem. It is easy to see why Dickinson would have gravitated to Barret Browning. Her playfulness of… Read more

  • Short-Story Review: “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote 15 novels, 7 novellas, and 85 short stories. She is best known for her novels, especially: I have spent some time with each of these three novels. I say “have spent some time” because I have started all three at various times and never managed to get to the end of… Read more

  • 2025: The Year of the Short Story

    For the past two months, I have been reading a lot of short stories and thinking even more about the Art of the Short Story. It really began with a conversation I had with Sue. She pointed out to me that my habit of regularly abandoning novels amounted essentially to creating my own short stories… Read more

  • Poetic Fragments and Drafts

    Getting up early every day to write for decades means that I have filled analog notebooks and computer files with what I have come to think of as Poetic Fragments or Poetic Drafts. They are too brief and small to be complete poems but at the same time, I can often find no way of… Read more