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Ireland, pound for pound, has created more great writers than any other county on earth, especially poets. Irish poet Paula Meehan and I have one thing in common. We both lived for a while and went to school in Cheney, Washington. Paula was there for grad school at Eastern Washington University. I was there for… Read more
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“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” — G.K. Chesterton. Happy Thanksgiving! – Mark Read more
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A number of years ago, more years ago than I care to admit, I spent some time reading Emerson’s poetry. My plan at that time was to work systematically through the American poets: Emerson to Whitman to Dickinson to Longfellow and so on. I had already done a similar thing with Irish Poets and thought… Read more
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Cozy Mystery a sub-genre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is usually an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community A few days ago, I reviewed here the first Christie book I had ever read, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Upon finishing Ackroyd, I… Read more
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With the coming of winter, my mind is on outdoor cafes and warmer weather. Here is a picture of an outdoor cafe in Den Haag where I had a cup of coffee one beautiful spring day long ago. Read more
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Cozy Mystery a sub-genre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is usually an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community Even though I am a big reader of mysteries, somehow I managed to get to the age of 64 without having read a single Agatha Christie novel.… Read more
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Like most book lovers, I enjoy reading books about books. I got Michael Dirda’s book, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting and Living with Books, from the local library here as an ebook. Since one of the points Dirda makes early in the book is how he only reads physical copies of books (never ebooks)… Read more
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Years ago I remember reading that Yeats would constantly re-write and re-work even his most famous published poems. At the time I read that, it sounded like the most insane thing I had ever heard. Why go to all the work to make a poem, to get it right, have it set into type and… Read more
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I have been spending a little time of late again with Robert Browning, reading Chesterton’s biography of Browning and re-reading for the first time in a couple of decades his poetry in a serious and more formal way. I have never been far from Browning (who incidentally, shares my birthday) because certain Browning poems and… Read more
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I started playing chess online in earnest more than 25+ years ago. I remain a patzer. About 5 or 6 years ago I inexplicably stopped. Recently however, clearly in response to the election, I started playing again. I have lost whatever skills I may have had. But like books and baseball, chess helps keep my… Read more
ClimbingSky 