JosieHolford I’ve been looking for a particular poem for a while now. When someone used the hashtag #SherlockPoems in a Twitter conversation I posted my inquiry. The poem I remember – but can’t find – is about a market stall heaped with glowing and colorful tropical fruits. It was used in a GSE exam paper sometime … Read more
I began this post in 2017. The original focus was Louis MacNeice’s’s poem “Brother Fire”. MacNeice was a fire-watcher during the London Blitz which meant that he spent nights on rooftops watching for, and reporting, fires caused by incendiary bombs. The poem expresses a human kinship with the destructive power of fire: O delicate walker, … Read more
One Plays Chess, the Other Checkers Nancy Pelosi does serious politics and toddler management 101. Trump watches Fox. As everyone knows – the lying bully-in-chief who – wanting to erect a pointless, ineffective and vastly expensive monument to himself on the southern border – was thoroughly defeated and out-maneuvered by Nancy Pelosi. She demonstrated the political … Read more
Eighty years ago today – on January 26th, 1939 – the poet W.H.Auden – accompanied by his friend and sometime lover Christopher Isherwood – stepped off the boat and arrived in New York City. It wasn’t their first visit. They had spent two happy weeks in the city in 1938, arriving by train from Vancouver … Read more
Do you remember what you were doing on the 22nd of June at 9.00am? I do – at least for the year 1964 because that was the date of the University of London GCE “O” level exam in Biology. I am seated in a single desk in one of many rows in a packed but … Read more
David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham. He made the speech and took the stand that many of us hoped that Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party with. Didn’t happen. If you follow British politics in any degree beyond zero then you may well have seen this video of David Lammy addressing the House … Read more
Lots of chatter about the fresh faces, diversity and new perspectives of the incoming class in the House of Representatives. Here’s a heartwarming story of the new everyday congress folk via Time magazine. It captures snippets of their hopes, dreams and earnest aspirations. Watch it below. My new congressman Antonio Delgado is in the group … Read more
The case against grades and grading has been so clearly made that it is time to turn the tables. Why – in 2019 – with all the evidence available – Why are institutions and individuals still clinging to this pernicious practice? Why do educators persist in wasting time discussing such irrelevancies as grading standards, grading … Read more
Rain is no respecter of persons the snow doesn’t give a soft white damn Whom it touches -e.e. cummings, Viva, 27 51 Kinds of Snow 1. Zen-blissed Buddha snow silent, soft, fat flakes. 2. Born-again snow that melts into the baltering mountain torrent to baptize the redeemed of the river plains. 3.Episcopal surplice snow, of … Read more
The Old Year The Old Year’s gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he’d a neighbour’s face, In this he’s known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we … Read more
No snow where I am at the moment but here’s a poem to enjoy now and also tuck away to use on snowy days. And on the topic of words for snow and Eskimos it’s good to read about The Great Eskimo Words for Snow Hoax that’s been perpetrated on several generations of the educated. … Read more
Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today is moving to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris but you can see it now in NYC. It’s at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University until February 10th 2019. Just go up – or down – on the 1,2 or 3 train to 125th Street and … Read more
I mostly associate the artist Saul Steinberg with the work he did for The New Yorker and the last time I saw an exhibit of his it was the traveling retrospective that came to the Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery at Vassar College in 2007-8. It was a full-scale survey of his work and quite amazing. … Read more
It was Clive Bennett who got me traveling down this particular track. He’s a real birder and maintains a wonderful blog – Art in Nature – where he writes of his adventures in the hedgerows and fields and where he celebrates birds and the artists who paint them. In a comment on a post about … Read more
