Here we go again. I swear—I can’t seem to resist a good dare, especially during National Poetry Month and Tweetspeak’s “Year of Shakespeare.” This time, it’s to memorize three sections of Romeo and Juliet. Why these particular three sections? Why not ones I’m already familiar with like . . . Like what? Follow me to Tweetspeak […]
Dared: A 30-Mile Bike Ride and a Request
I’ve gone and dared myself again. Back in December my cardiologist told me I needed to lose some weight. Sigh… I know that, but he’s the first doctor who ever called me out. In the past I’ve heard things like, “No worries. We all gain a little as we get older.” I’m not sure […]
Commit Poetry: Ozymandias, Breaking Bad, and a Duck
I read a Facebook post on January 11 of this year announcing that it was the 200th anniversary of the day The Examiner published Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias.” Ozzy who? I had to look up the pronunciation. Several folks say Ah-zee-mahn-dee-us. Others say Ah-zee-man-dee-us. But some say to fit the meter of the sonnet, the name […]
Dared: Hobnobbing With Alligators – and other Adventures
. . . Hosanna to the alligators in the highest: Glory be to their Maker. —Diana Woodcock, “In the Company of Alligators” We have lived here now for a whole year. Our neighborhood—carved from the Everglades—has zero lot lines and circle-around ponds (also known as lakes) while Surinam cherry hedges provide a bit of […]
A Most Shocking #OneWord for 2018
The man, wearing a burgundy Florida State University t-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Lethal Simplicity,” nodded as we approached each other on a recent walk around the neighborhood. “And how are we today?” he asked. “Simply fine,” I responded and laughed as his golden retriever pulled him on past. I thought of Dorothy in […]
Commit Poetry: Edgar Guest – and My Uncle Edgar
For Edgar Gilmore with congratulations and the best wishes always of another Edgar. Sincerely, Edgar A. Guest June 17, 1939 That’s the inscription inside Edgar A. Guest says: It Can Be Done, a book I found when we were packing up to move. I called my dad the other day. “Who was Edgar Gilmore?” He didn’t know. […]
The Metz Fire of 1908–and Maybe a Connection
My grandmother once rode a train through the middle of a forest fire. I heard the story second-hand from my dad. The family settled in Alpena, he told me, and never returned home to Tower, Michigan. Grandma was four years old. She was born in 1904. Tower is about 15 miles west of […]
Commit Poetry: Printing in My Heart’s Wax
Although I’ve forgotten a lot about my high school years, I do recall a fear of poetry, and letting my eyes roam around the room or stare at my book while I mentally begged the teacher not to call on me in class. Yet if I really was so scared, why did I torture […]
Commit Poetry: The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps […]
Commit Poetry: Prufrock Complete And Worth It All
I grow old . . . I grow old . . . Who starts memorizing poetry at my age? If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be memorizing swaths of poetry now—on purpose—starting with a 131-line T.S. Eliot poem, I might have rolled up the bottoms of my white girlfriend jeans and […]
