ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

POETRY REVIEWS

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter” by Robert Frost

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on December 11, 2011. Winter has come to the North Country. Last year by this time we were already buried under snow and had much more still to come. This year there has been just two dustings, Read more

  • Context

    Context is important for me. Works of creation, athletic greatness, life-itself does not happen in a vacuum. There is always context. And where there is context there is influence. One of the things I created for myself years ago is a something I call “Writers/Artists in Context.” It is something I refer to often when Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Prayer at Winter Solstice” by Dana Gioia

    “Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 23, 2012. Thanksgiving began in the North Country as an unseasonably  warm and sunny day, but ended wet and windy and cold. This morning the grass is coated with a light dusting of snow and Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Flat Lands” by Carl Sandburg

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 4, 2011. I have been thinking lately of poems about stars or poems where lines about stars figure prominently. There are many. For the month of November, MontanaWriter will be featuring a few old and new favorite-poems Read more

  • ESSENTIAL POETS

    I have been thinking about essential poets. Poets that I feel must be read. Or better yet, that I must re-read. So I made for myself a quick list of essential poets (in no particular order): Reviewing the list now, I see a number of holes (Victorians, contemporary), but overall I think I am satisfied with it. Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: excerpt from “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” by Hugh MacDiarmid

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 12, 2011. At the end of the Victorian era, nationalistic literary movements sprang up in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The Irish movement and its writers are, of course, well known. But the same kind of Read more

  • Poems in my Pocket

    Years ago I worked in a middle-school Media Center. Each year, the English teachers would declare a day as, “Poem in Your Pocket Day.” On that day staff and students were encouraged to carry around in their pockets, a favorite poem to share others. It began for me a habit of always having some of Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY “I am the People, the Mob” by Carl Sandburg

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on October 19, 2011. The Occupy Wall Street movement has been much in the news, and much on my mind. A life-time mistrust of a system where some can drive Mercedes while others struggle to pay the Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: POETRY REVIEW: Written in Very Early Youth, by William Wordsworth

    “Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on MARCH 15, 2012. This is one of Wordsworth’s earliest poems. Even though it is early in his career, it contains much that we would consider to be lyrical and “Wordsworthian”: nature, emotion, and the individual. Enjoy! Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “October” by Hilaire Belloc

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on October 22, 2011. When I lived in Chicago I would occasionally go to a little bar to read and study over a pint of Guinness. And to watch Cubs games in the spring and fall. One Read more