ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

POETRY REVIEWS

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Billy Collins on Poetry

    The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, ‘What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?’ That’s the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “First Dream” by Billy Collins

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on June 28th, 2011. Billy Collins’ popularity and financial success make him one of those poets it is hard to ignore. The quality of his poetry makes him impossible to forget. Collins’ poem “The First Dream” is… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: A.A. Milne oN “Doing Nothing”

    “Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.“ — A.A. Milne (from Winnie-the-Pooh) Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Shelley on Poetry

    “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” ~Percy Bysshe Shelley Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: W.B. Yeats on Imagination

    “By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live”.  ~ W.B. Yeats Read more

  • A Thaw and Re-Reading

    Here in the North Country, we had a few days of 50-degree weather, but yesterday it snowed again. Those few days of warmth, though, were a foretaste of the feast to come. We are told that ICE is drawing down its numbers here in Minnesota, but reports on the ground remain unclear as to whether… Read more

  • UTTERANCES OF THE HEART

    In the rabbinical tradition, at times of calamity and great suffering, Jews are advised to read three books:  The fact that the most important passages of these books were written in poetry is no accident. For it is poetry, and poetry alone, that can truly give voice to the utterances of our hearts. “How lonely sits the… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Carl Sandburg on Poetry

    Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. – Carl Sandburg Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: Winter Trees” by William Carlos Williams

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on January 22, 2011. William Carlos Williams said he modeled his original form and style of poetry on the language that he heard ordinary people using in his day to day life as a doctor. One of… Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

    If I were ever to teach a class to aspiring American poets, I would have one required text: the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Hemingway famously wrote in The Green Hills of Africa that all modern American fiction comes from one book, Huckleberry Finn. A similar thing can be said for Walt Whitman and the 1855 edition of Leaves… Read more