Category: articles
-
A Defense of Poetry : Inconveniences Rightly Considered
This Defense of Poetry is the start of a poetry podcast in which I’m reading first from my book Inconveniences, Rightly Considered — a collection of poems I wrote since 2005.
-
Secure Persons
[Those] who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to support their confidence, and in their frantic search they cling not only to the shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical…
-
Cult of Ignorance
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” —Isaac Asimov
-
Spiva Center for the Arts : Rebecca Kanan’s Poem based on Mearcstapa
Thanks to F.C. Schultz for the heads up. Rebecca Kanan wrote a poem for Spiva Center for the Arts based on the album cover Mark Neuenschwander and Dave Mehrens made for my failed Kickstarter album: She wrote it for Spiva Center for the Arts “1,000 Words” project in which poets and tellers are invited to write…
-
The Rings of Venus — from 58 poems written at 29
The Platonists pilfered impossible thoughts From the tiniest things. How the thinkers Mind a mouse or a mellon and dream Distillate dreams that drink of the fountain Of joy and justice that enjambs a row Boat into debates beautiful and sailing Or infers the fern from the foundry’s smelt Singed gold leaf. See me hold The…
-
New York Dictionary : Choose Your Own Coffee Beans
Here’s how New Yorkers communicate that you must choose your coffee beans and roasts by hand:
-
Small Stories for Kids: SCARY DRESS UP by 8-year-old Harry Neuenschwander
It was a cold night when suddenly Jack heard something. So he went downstairs. “It was coming from the kitchen,” he said as he walked in. Then he screamed and ran out of the kitchen. “Ahhh!” But it was actually his big brother Sam dressing as a ghost. “I just wanted to scare you so…
-
Millions a Month
“A nation which can spend so many millions a day on a war can surely afford a few millions a month on productive research in peacetime.” – C.S. Lewis
-
Prog Code — from 58 poems written at 29
From the broken bytes of Bernie’s movement A scrapyard assembled. Seams were bound By unseemly stitches, a scarlet old thread With a green or a gold or a great navy And the parties perished and progress was encoded On the minds of mankind and the matriarchy And they plugged in the power. They primed this…
-
Dark Towers — from 58 poems written at 29
At the end of every alley their stands A timeless tower. Top of the Rock Rises rustic and rearing tomorrow’s Artisan deco amateurs and their visions Of gilded ages. Glimpse it at the end Of an alley or walkway. Empire is there At the end of broadway or as the aim of Macy’s Herald Square.…
-
The Nuance of the Lust of the Flesh
Once I wondered why the men I respected in my life spoke so often about old and weathered sins and vices that still they struggle through. They talked of pecadillos the way we, as children, talked of a refusal to eat our peas and carrots: as if they’re mortal sins. In this way too, Benjamin…
-
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love America
Film buffs will know I pulled my title from Dr. Strangelove or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The film is a comedy of errors in which the entire world is summed up in a cowboy who literally cackles and cheers as he rides a nuclear explosive from the heavens down…