Stalin’s Heirs by Yevgeny Yevtushenko Mute was the marble. Mutely glimmered the glass. Mute stood the sentries, bronzed by the breeze. Thin wisps of smoke curled over the coffin. And breath seeped through the chinks as they bore him out the mausoleum doors. Slowly the coffin floated, grazing the fixed bayonets. He also was mute- … Read more
If you went to school in the UK anytime in the last sixty years then you will probably be familiar with this much anthologized poem. Timothy Winters by Charles Causley Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football pool, Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A blitz of a boy … Read more
Muriel Rukeyser wrote this in 1968. Read it and tell me it doesn’t feel like she is writing for this moment in history. How many mornings recently have you been “more or less insane” as the news pours out of “various devices”? Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) I lived in … Read more
What an intriguing idea: Reversing time to see your younger self moving forward in time as you move backward. What if everything that’s happening here has a reverse reality in an anti-world? Mueller’s poem plays with this idea of opposite motions. What would you need to have on hand to meet that self midway through … Read more
Thaw by Edward Thomas Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass. Thomas wrote all his poetry in a three-year burst of creativity between 1914 and 1917. He had enlisted in 1915 … Read more
Not a very effective way to get children to love school and enjoy math. But looks like it was an excellent method for teaching subversion, resilience and resistance to authority. Good work Miss Moran. Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School by Jane Kenyon The others bent their heads and started in. Confused, I … Read more
There’s a comfort in routines and familiar sounds. Some towns have a noon whistle. If you’ve lived near a school or a factory you’ll know a routine. If you’re close to a children’s playground you can tell the time of day as it fills up with voices when school gets out. My childhood had the Swindon … Read more
Wood On The Downs After Paul Nash by Martin Malone We have been here before. Uffington, Hackpen, Grim’s Ditch, Ogbourne St.George, Wayland’s Smithy, Sparshott Firs, Bishopstone and Barbury; all the trodden way from Overton to Beacon Hill. Each place its genius loci, a favourite colour: Ash-Blue, Ochre, Payne’s Grey, Terra-Verte, Lamp Black, Sienna. But … Read more
How will artists and writers portray this Trumpian time of disillusion, delusion and deception in which we now live? All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. – Wilfred Owen Perhaps we can find some clues in the extraordinary exhibit World War I and American Art now … Read more
March 25th marks the anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire. In Shirt Robert Pinsky weaves in the Triangle Factory fire as he broods over the purchase of a shirt. He dwells with careful loving attention on the technical terms for shirt-making. His lists of esoteric terms and trades lead to moral digressions on Asian … Read more
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; … Read more
Caravaggio is one of the bad boys in the history of art with a biography so outlandish it reads like fiction. When he arrived in Sicily in 1608 he was wanted for murder in Rome and had brawled his way across the Mediterranean. There a story of his entering a church in Messina where he … Read more
The Palatine Chapel is one of those must-see places if ever you have the chance. It was commissioned by the enlightened Norman King Roger II (Ruggero) and was consecrated on Palm Sunday 1140. It was designated a UNESCO World heritage site in 2015. It’s inside the palace of the Norman kings of Sicily that now serves as … Read more
The Gallery of Modern Art is located inside the restored 15th century convent of Sant’Anna and has many works of art from the last 150 years. I always enjoy looking at depictions of schools and classrooms and I was very taken with this large painting – Gli Scolari (The Schoolchildren) – by Felice Casorati. Five students … Read more
Palermo has three outdoor markets and we managed to hit all of them. Two we found by design while foraging for supplies and the third on our walk back from the Palentine Chapel and on our way to the completely over the top Chiesa del Gesù. So a few scenes from the market and then … Read more