May 7, 2008
Baseball and Breakfast
Since I was eight years old, I have had my breakfast every morning during baseball season while reading the box scores. It's always more fun when the Red Sox win of course, but even when they lose, the box scores still never disappoint. Not familiar with a box score? Wikipedia can explain.
But even in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Julio Franco retired, and this article is a nice tribute to a fine career. I had watched Franco closely the past few years. After Rickey Henderson left the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, Franco was the only active player in major league baseball who was older than me. Alas, now I am older than every single one of them. I guess I won't ever be center fielder for the Red Sox after all.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:22 AM | Comments (7)
April 10, 2008
The Inevitable
American Life in Poetry: Column 159
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.
The Inevitable
To have that letter arrive
was like the mist that took a meadow
and revealed hundreds
of small webs once invisible
The inevitable often
stands by plainly but unnoticed
till it hands you a letter
that says death and you notice
the weed field had been
readying its many damp handkerchiefs
all along
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Allan Peterson, whose most recent book of poetry is All the Lavish in Common, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, winner of the Juniper Prize. Reprinted from The Chattahoochee Review, Winter 2007, V. 27, no. 2, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2008
All is Forgiven
Bill Buckner is throwing out the first ball. I guess enough time has passed since you-know-when.
UPDATE: The Globe's Amalie Benjamin has a nice article about the emotions of the day.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:30 PM | Comments (1)
April 7, 2008
Sports Illustrated Opens the Vault...
... and produces gems like this, a 1988 article that relates a story about how Larry Bird viewed an earlier Boston legend, and one of the heroes of my youth, Bobby Orr.
At the Boston Garden when the national anthem is played, Bird gazes to the heavens. Everyone assumes that he's looking at the Celtics banners, but ironically, he began to fix his eyes on only one banner—the retired No. 4. But not retired by the Celtics. The No. 4 belonged to the Bruins' Bobby Orr. Bird has stared at the black and gold banner so many times, he can see it in his mind's eye. He knows every stitch, how many lines pierce the circle around the capital B. "Eight. Don't bet me," he says.
Bird had met Orr only once and had never seen him play, but he had heard how great he was as a player and had learned how much Boston admired Orr as a person. Bird had been too bashful ever to tell Orr this, though, and revealed it only last month in his speech at the Sports Museum dinner, where Orr was on hand for the unveiling of Bird's statue. When Orr heard Bird speak of him, the breath went out of him in a whoosh, and there were tears in his eyes.
"My god," Orr whispered in the dark. "My god."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:55 PM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2008
In Your Absence
American Life in Poetry: Column 157
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
From your school days you may remember A. E. Housman's poem that begins, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with bloom along the bough." Here's a look at a blossoming cherry, done 120 years later, on site among the famous cherry trees of Washington, by D.C. poet Judith Harris.
In Your Absence
Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.
It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.
Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.
It is only April.
I can't stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted by permission of Judith Harris. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2008
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly...
... , "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
I am reviewing an eBook device and decided to see what it would like to re-read Heart of Darkness on it. The verdict? I think I am sold on eBook devices, and Conrad is still brilliant.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2008
Quirky Signs of Spring
- My clock radio waking me at 6:30 AM to the sounds of a Red Sox baseball game
- Even stranger--being in bumper-to-bumper traffic when the Red Sox tied it in the top of the 9th on Brandon Moss's first-ever major league home run
- Three guys ogling a new driver in the parking lot when I got to the office.
- We just had Easter, which is about as early as you can have it, and I don't see much green yet. I am still waiting for more traditional signs of Spring, like buttercups!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:35 AM
March 23, 2008
Pint and Pen
My friend Paul Evenson writes with the happy news that he won second prize in the Pint and Pen writing contest sponsored by Bukowski's tavern in Cambridge. His story, "Vincenco's Mistake," is very clever.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:07 AM
William Butler Yeats
It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916. There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie).
Not surprisingly, the Web is full of terrific Yeats resources. The Wikipedia article is excellent and chock full of citations and outbound links. I also found a voice recording of Yeats reading Innisfree, and you can find a wonderful short video about the genesis of "Byzantium."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)
March 22, 2008
Fantasy Baseball
So I drafted my fantasy baseball team this morning. It's a traditional rotisserie league team, so the stats are runs, home runs, average, RBIs, and stolen bases for hitters, and innings pitched, wins, saves, strikeouts and WHIP for pitchers. I think I did OK. I ended up with:
- C--Kenji Johjima
- 1B--David Ortiz
- 2B--Plácido Polanco
- 3B--Kevin Youkilis
- SS--Derek Jeter
- OF--Vernon Wells
- OF--Jacoby Ellsbury
- OF--Raúl Ibañez
- Util--Frank Thomas
- Bench--Evan Longoria, Melky Cabrera, Casey Blake, Bengie Molina, Mark DeRosa
- Starting Pitchers--Jake Peavy, Roy Halladay, Dontrelle Willis
- Relief Pitchers--Jonathan Papelbon, Takashi Saito, Todd Jones, George Sherrill
I don't feel like I have enough pitchers. (You never have enough pitching in baseball, right?)
Let the games begin! The Sox open in Japan this coming Wednesday. I hope it's warmer here than it is here, though I believe the games are going to be held indoor.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:35 PM
March 21, 2008
Today's News
American Life in Poetry: Column 156
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
We greatly appreciate your newspaper’s use of this column, and today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey “Star-Ledger” and has been a reporter and editor at the “Toronto Star” and the “Philadelphia Inquirer.” He was on the “Star-Ledger” team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.
Today’s News
A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher
who kept the same store for fifty years. People remembered
when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned
with flower stalls and fish stands.
The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,
by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings. News was stationed
around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--
but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting
at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,
then went home early. The birds were still singing,
the sun just going down. Working these long hours,
you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,
the big houses like ships turning into the night,
their rooms piled high with silence.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by David Tucker. Reprinted from Late for Work by David Tucker, Mariner Books, 2006, by permission of the author. First printed in Montana Journalism Review. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:41 PM
March 13, 2008
Oh, The Places You'll Go!
From my high school newspaper, junior year.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:44 PM | Comments (3)
March 1, 2008
We Interrupt this Miserable Winter Day to Bring You
A moment of summer bliss, foreshadowed.
Brought to you by the great Joel Meyerowitz and Cape Light.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:48 PM
February 28, 2008
Spare Parts
American Life in Poetry: Column 153
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagine "what if?" What if we had been given "a baker's dozen of hearts?" I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has.
Spare Parts
We barge out of the womb
with two of them: eyes, ears,
arms, hands, legs, feet.
Only one heart. Not a good
plan. God should know we
need at least a dozen,
a baker's dozen of hearts.
They break like Easter eggs
hidden in the grass,
stepped on and smashed.
My own heart is patched,
bandaged, taped, barely
the same shape it once was
when it beat fast for you.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Trish Dugger. Reprinted from "Magee Park Poets: Anthology 2007," No. 18, Friends of the Carlsbad City Library, 2006, by permission of Trish Dugger. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:49 AM
February 25, 2008
Happy Birthday...
But more important than that, happy birthday to my nephew, Jake!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2008
Medical History
American Life in Poetry: Column 152
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.
Medical History
I wanted it: arc of red and blue
strobing my skin, sirens singing
my praises, the cinching embrace
of the cot as the ambulance
slammed shut and steered away.
More than needle-pierce
or dragging blade, I wanted the swab
of alcohol and cotton, the promise
of gauze-covered cure.
My mother saved anyone
who asked, but never me,
never the way I wanted:
her palms skimming my limbs
for injury, her fingers finding
what hurt, her lips whispering,
I got here just in time.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Carrie Shipers. Reprinted from Mid-American Review, Vol. 27, no. 2, 2007, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:26 PM
Penne Puttanesca
I don't cook much, but I went out for dinner with my older son the other night and discovered the restaurant had dropped my favorite dish from there, Penne Puttanesca, from the menu. I had to go with something else, but that left me thinking of the dish since. So this morning I woke up with the idea to make it myself. Those of you who cook a lot know the Internet is a treasure trove for recipes, so I searched and found a bewildering array of choices. But I read a bunch, and found one I liked, at a sight whose name, MassRecipes.com, seems to indicated it is built for volume and not necessarily for quality.
But it worked out great. I fretted some in choosing the ingredients at the market, but then the cooking was fun. I made some pasta with a simpler sauce too in case my boys didn't like the spicy sauce. Turns out my older son and I liked the Puttanesca, and my wife and younger son tried some and went with the simpler sauce. My older son ended up eating even more than I did, so I count it as a success!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:04 PM
February 23, 2008
Today's Spring Training Weather
Meanwhile, back in Boston, I wake up to about 9 inches of snow on the ground and 27 degrees.
And people wonder why we get so excited about "Truck Day."
UPDATE: I was getting my hair cut this morning and a friend walked in. Knocking the snow off his boots, he announces to no one in particular, "83 degrees and sunny in Fort Myers this morning!"
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:57 AM
Frank O'Connor
One of the great things about the Internet is that, very often, if you just happen to think of something, you can then go out and find it. The other day I was thinking about the great Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor, and, sure and begorrah, there was one of my favorite stories of his, "First Confession", and a Paris Review interview (PDF file). (Note that the typesetting on the short story is a little off, but it still reads well.)
Somehow, I didn't discover O'Connor until graduate school. By then I considered myself a pretty serious student of the short story, and I soon realized that O'Connor had created many of the best ones, including "First Confession," but also including "My Oedipus Complex." Then my advisor recommended O'Connor's book on the craft of short stories, The Lonely Voice, and I was hooked. By that point in graduate school I was overwhelmed with books on the craft of writing. Along with maybe two or three others, I still pick up and read The Lonely Voice when I need a little wisdom.
Wikipedia has an article about O'Connor, but it is pretty thin. There's a reprint of a book chapter here--a nice introduction to the 1998 book, Frank O'Connor: New Perspectives. If you like these stories, I recommend his Collected Stories.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 AM
February 16, 2008
Is Valentine's Day for Poets?
Ted Kooser thinks so.
Around this time of year, for more than 20 years, women around the country have checked their mail and found a postcard bearing a red heart in the corner and a poem: a valentine from Ted Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006.
Now, he has collected those poems in a book called Valentines.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM
February 14, 2008
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Pitchers and catchers report today!
With apologies to Lewis Carroll.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:13 AM
February 13, 2008
We're Moving!
Well, sort of.
What I am actually doing is launching a new blog and practice as part of the Gilbane Group (press release here and the new blog, XML Technologies and Content Strategies, here). The new blog and practice are collaborations with my long-time Gilbane colleagues Mary Laplante and Leonor Ciarlone.
As we launch the new blog at Gilbane, I am transitioning this one to a personal blog, much like the one I had before, A Thousand Furnished Rooms. I will be discussing writing, literature, baseball, and life, not necessarily in that order.
I have been at this blog thing for more than four years, and it has always been an evolution. I started with a technology blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing, then started A Thousand Furnished Rooms. Somewhere in there I briefly had a politics blog (an ugly undertaking in a nasty little world). Also somewhere in there, I began blogging at Gilbane's primary blog, folded the politics blog (oh, happy day!) and combined Ideas in Technology and Publishing and A Thousand Furnished Rooms into this blog.
So now I evolve again. If you want to read about content management, XML, and publishing technologies and strategies, check out the new Gilbane blog (Atom feed here). If you want to hear about more nebulous topics, stick around here. You are more than welcome.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
Currently Reading
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The book is even better than the title, and it will soon be on the big screen. A nice review of the book is here. The author has a terrific website with a lot of original material, though it's a little heavy on the pop-ups.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:32 AM
January 8, 2008
They're Watching
Another Christmas gift--figurines of great writers. I arranged them on my desk, facing me as I work. Twain, Joyce, Woolf, Shakespeare, Poe. I think they are bored to tears already
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM | Comments (1)
December 25, 2007
Petey Says...
.... Merry Christmas too!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:57 PM
Merry Christmas
To friends near and far!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM
December 18, 2007
I'm Working, Really I Am
But someone is coming to town, and I am all excited!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:49 PM
Some Christmas Tunes
From Finetune
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM
December 15, 2007
Already Stuck for Holiday Shopping Ideas?
Amazon Gift Certificates are always welcome
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:37 AM
November 25, 2007
icanhascheezburger
If you like cats, and have never visited the site, you owe it to yourself. When I hear about Web 2.0, I can think of no better example. ;)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:35 PM
November 19, 2007
Mikey Lowell
Looks like Lowell is going to re-sign with the Sox. Fingers crossed, as it is not a done deal apparently, but I would love to see him stay on. As a friend of mine quipped, someone should name a town after that man.
It's official.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:17 PM
November 11, 2007
Lest I Forget
My granddad, Wilbur Halliday. He was born in 1900, but was not in World War I, which would have ended a few months after his 18th birthday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 PM
Oh, What the Heck
A second pic for Veteran's Day. My Dad and Grandmom. I don't have a date for this one, but I like to think this is after the war, and my dad is home. That would explain his big smile.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:54 PM
Veteran's Day
My dad, Sgt. Charles M. Trippe, Army Air Corps, a wing gunner on a bomber in the Pacific Theater from 1943-1945. The picture is inscribed, "As ever, Charles, 5-7-44." His squadron was making their way across the Pacific as the Japanese retreated. I will have to look at the records I have to figure out whereabouts he was in May 1944. It looks like a studio picture, and was either colorized from black and white or the color was enhanced. Maybe they were in Hawaii on some R&R? Maybe, though my recollection is that his unit took a much more southerly route, down near Australia and of New Guinea.
My father would have been just over 18 in this picture, but he already looks older, doesn't see? He saw a lot of action in the war, and it didn't sit well with him. I wonder how much he had seen by this point. Like a lot of veterans, he rarely spoke about it. I only remember two stories, both quick and offbeat and funny and a little scary. One was when his bomber hit what he described as an air pocket and he found himself plastered to the roof of the plane. Only as I write this does it occur to me that maybe the air pocket was enemy flak or an evasive maneuver. The other story was about having to eat bugs for food in the Phillipines. Kind of a cool story when you are a kid, but not so cool thinking about it as an adult.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:30 PM
October 29, 2007
Baseball
I've used this before, but what the heck. It is a good one, and it is fitting for today if you are a Red Sox fan.
I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair those losses, and be a blessing to us.
—Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM
October 28, 2007
A Story That Never Gets Old
In more ways than one.
Some stats on tonight's game, for those so inclined.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:29 PM
October 27, 2007
Leading Off, Playing Center Field
Jacoby Ellsbury. The picture is from a game this year when Jacoby scored from second base on a passed ball, something I have never seen before in 40 years of watching baseball.
Of course, now he is much better known because of the taco thing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:19 AM
October 26, 2007
Pledge Your Allegiance
At the United Countries of Baseball. A cool app.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:33 PM
October 25, 2007
Even the Lion in Winter...
... was once a cub.
No, not that kind of cub.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:45 PM
The Crossing
American Life in Poetry: Column 135
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
What motivates us to keep moving forward through our lives, despite all the effort required to do so? Here, North Carolina poet Ruth Moose attributes human characteristics to an animal to speculate upon what that force might be.
The Crossing
The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He's burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.
The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2004 by Ruth Moose, whose most recent book of poetry is The Sleepwalker, Main Street Rag, 2007. Reprinted from 75 Poems on Retirement, edited by Robin Chapman and Judith Strasser, published by University of Iowa Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:08 AM
October 24, 2007
The Impossible Dream
I became a Red Sox fan in 1967. I was 8 years old, grew up 8.2 miles from Fenway Park, and had a Dad, Mom, and two older brothers who loved the Sox. My allegiance was foreordained. By dumb luck, that was also the year the hapless Red Sox turned it all around to become The Cardiac Kids, the Impossible Dream Team that won the AL pennant on the last day of the season and went on to take the mighty St. Louis Cardinals to a full seven-game World Series before they lost. To this day, I consider Bob Gibson to be the greatest picture of all time and the name Julian Javier makes me want to curl up into a ball. The seventh-game loss broke my 8-year-old heart, but I was hooked, and have lived and died with the Red Sox ever since.
Nothing is more astonishing than the passage of time, and this year marks the 40th anniversary of that Red Sox season. At opening day this year, the Red Sox staged a nice tribute to that team. They're old men now--how on earth did that happen?--and some of them have even passed on, but many of them were there. Yaz, Rico, Gentleman Jim, even the Hawk. The Boston Herald put together a nice photo montage.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM
October 21, 2007
Dice-K
First pitch at about 8:20 EST tonight, all happening right here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:13 PM
October 20, 2007
Boston's Tenth Man Could Not be Wrong
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:22 PM
October 13, 2007
Afterwards
American Life in Poetry: Column 133
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.
Afterwards
A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves off—fanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent
to help us at graveside tolerate the sun,
which was brutal all afternoon as if
stationed above us, though it moved limb
to limb through two huge, covering elms.
The long processional of neighbors, friends,
the town's elderly, her beauty-shop patrons,
her club's notables. . . The world is full of
prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said.
Look up through the trees—the hands, the leaves
curled as in self-control or quietly hurting,
or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined,
and whether from heat or sadness, waving.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2004 by David Baker, whose most recent book of poetry is Midwest Eclogue, W. W. Norton, 2006. Reprinted from "Virginia Quarterly Review," Winter, 2004, by permission of David Baker. Introduction copyright © 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM
October 6, 2007
Harmony
One of the marvels of singing. Two voices with absolutely nothing in common, except perhaps sharing a little twang, blend, to my ear, into near perfection.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:03 PM
October 5, 2007
Bugged
I've watched a lot of baseball over the years, and I have to say the plague of mayflies that rattled the Yankees into a loss against the Indians last night was maybe the strangest thing I have seen. It did bring to mind another Cleveland baseball oddity though. Back in 1986, the Red Sox and Indians once had a game postponed due to fog, which led Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd to famously observe, "That's what you get for building a ballpark on the ocean."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:20 PM
October 3, 2007
Back, I Think
I had some problems with my Movable Type installation which led me to upgrade to MT 4, but only after I had migrated to a new server at my hosting company.
Fun, fun, fun!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:53 PM
September 1, 2007
As Ned Martin Would Have Said
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, see this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:57 PM
August 23, 2007
My bad...
Someone had a birthday yesterday and I forgot!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:51 PM
August 17, 2007
The Times are Never So Bad
This is cool. A new documentary about my man, Andre Dubus, debuted this month. It looks like I will have a few chances to see it this fall. I took a minute to update my Dubus aStore to include two Hollywood films that have been made, based upon his work.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:40 AM
August 9, 2007
Matinee
American Life in Poetry: Column 124
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Here is a lovely poem about survival by Patrick Phillips of New York. People sometimes ask me "What are poems for?" and "Matinee" is an example of the kind of writing that serves its readers, that shows us a way of carrying on.
Matinee
After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,
for a few hours no one could find them,
not even my sister,
because it turns out
they'd gone to the movies.
Something tragic was playing,
something epic,
and so they went to the comedy
with their popcorn
and their cokes,
the old wife whispering everything twice,
the old husband
cupping a palm to his ear,
as the late sun lit up an orchard
behind the strip mall,
and they sat in the dark holding hands.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Patrick Phillips, whose latest book is Chattahoochee, University of Arkansas Press, 2004. Reprinted from the "Greensboro Review," Fall 2006, No. 80, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM
July 15, 2007
London
"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
— Samuel Johnson
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:02 PM
June 24, 2007
Geometry
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 117
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The subdivision; it's all around us. Here Nancy Botkin of Indiana presents a telling picture of life in such a neighborhood, the parents downstairs in their stultifying dailiness, the children enjoying their youth under the eaves before the passing years force them to join the adults.
Geometry
All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.
We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Nancy Botkin. Reprinted from "Poetry East," Spring, 2006, by permission of the author, whose full-length book of poems, Parts That Were Once Whole, is available from Mayapple Press, 2007. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:41 PM
June 7, 2007
Echo
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 114
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.
Echo
A lone
voice
in the
right
empty space
makes
its own
best
company.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2005 by Robert West. Reprinted from Best Company, Blink Chapbooks, Chapel Hill, NC, 2005, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
May 8, 2007
Number Four
Bobby Orr.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:50 PM | Comments (2)
May 5, 2007
Hopper
Few painters move me. Renoir. Van Gogh. And, yes, Hopper.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:31 AM
May 1, 2007
Wallpapering
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 109
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire.
Wallpapering
My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly
hung, doubt would set in. Would the floral
have been a better choice? Then it would grow
until she was certain: it had to go. Divorce
terrified me as a child. I didn't know
what led to it, but I had my suspicions.
The stripes came down. Up went
the flowers. Eventually it became my definition
of marriage: bad choices, arguments
whose victors time refused to tell,
but everything done together and done well.
Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, from her book, The Golden Hour, published by Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:27 PM
April 12, 2007
Supple Cord
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 107
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood.
Supple Cord
My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.
Reprinted from A MAZE ME, Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is You and Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:08 AM | TrackBack
April 7, 2007
Jazz Favorites
Some jazz, brought to you by the princess, Smudgie, a cool cat by any definition.
I included the current artists and songs in the play list below, but it was too much work, cutting and pasting and adding the HTML code. But I wanted the information in there for the search engines. Finetune.com should make it easier. I don't know Flash, but perhaps that information is in the client already and could somehow be exposed to the search engines?
The play list includes Alberta Hunter, The Darktown Strutters' Ball; Bill Evans, 'Round Midnight, Autumn Leaves, and Stella By Starlight; Billie Holiday, Darn That Dream, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, and They Can't Take That Away From Me; Blossom Dearie, I Won't Dance, Love Is Here To Stay, and Manhattan; Charlie Parker, Bloomdido, Ko Ko and Salt Peanuts; Clifford Brown, Daahoud, Jordu, and Joy Spring; Count Basie, It's Only a Paper Moon and Sing for Your Supper; Duke Ellington, Satin Doll and Take The "A" Train; Ella Fitzgerald, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, I've Got You Under My Skin, and Misty; Frank Sinatra, I Get A Kick Out Of You, I've Got You Under My Skin (yes, again), Fly Me to the Moon, Summer Wind, and The Way You Look Tonight; John Coltrane (with vocals by Johnny Hartman), Dedicated to You, My One and Only Love, and You Are Too Beautiful; Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Cold Duck Time and Compared To What; Louis Armstrong, Ain't Misbehavin', Dream A Little Dream Of Me, and Our Love Is Here To Stay (with Ella); Louis Prima, Embraceable You/I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good (Medley)(Live), Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, and Jump, Jive, An' Wail; Miles Davis, Budo, Moon Dreams, and Rocker (all from The Complete Birth Of The Cool); Nat King Cole, Almost Like Being In Love and Let's Fall In Love; and Tony Bennett, This Can't Be Love.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:25 AM
April 6, 2007
Catching the Moles
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 106
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
then wait for the ground
to move again.
I hold the shoe box,
you, the trowel.
When I give you the signal
you dig in behind
and flip forward.
Out he pops into daylight,
blind velvet.
We nudge him into the box,
carry him down the hill.
Four times we've done it.
The children worry.
Have we let them all go
at the very same spot?
Will they find each other?
We can't be sure ourselves,
only just beginning to learn
the fragile rules of uprooting.
Poem copyright (c) 1986 by Judith Kitchen, whose most recent book is the novel, The House on Eccles Road, Graywolf Press, 2004. Reprinted from "Perennials," Anhinga Press, 1986, with permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:31 PM
April 5, 2007
The Word of the Day...
is Daisuke.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:18 PM
April 1, 2007
Hope springs eternal!
Baseball's opening day is here.
Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
--Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:42 AM
March 29, 2007
Laundry
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 105
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I've talked often in this column about how poetry can hold a mirror up to life, and I'm especially fond of poems that hold those mirrors up to our most ordinary activities, showing them at their best and brightest. Here Ruth Moose hangs out some laundry and, in an instant, an everyday chore that might have seemed to us to be quite plain is fresh and lovely.
Laundry
All our life
so much laundry;
each day's doing or not
comes clean,
flows off and away
to blend with other sins
of this world. Each day
begins in new skin,
blessed by the elements
charged to take us
out again to do or undo
what's been assigned.
From socks to shirts
the selves we shed
lift off the line
as if they own
a life apart
from the one we offer.
There is joy in clean laundry.
All is forgiven in water, sun
and air. We offer our day's deeds
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.
Reprinted from Making the Bed, Main Street Rag Press, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1995 by Ruth Moose, whose latest book of poetry, "The Sleepwalker," Main Street Rag, due out in 2007. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:25 PM | TrackBack
March 25, 2007
Guest House
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-- Rumi
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:16 AM
March 24, 2007
Where They Lived
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 104
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
At some time many of us will have to make a last visit to a house where aged parents lived out their days. Here Marge Saiser beautifully compresses one such farewell.
Where They Lived
One last time I unlock
the house where they lived
and fought and tried again:
the air of the place,
carpet with its unchanging green,
chair with its back to me.
On the TV set, the Christmas cactus
has bloomed, has spilled its pink flowers
down its scraggly arms
and died, drying into paper.
At the round oak table,
ghosts lean toward one another,
almost a bow, before rising,
before ambling away.
Reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser, whose most recent book of poems is Lost in Seward County, Backwaters Press, 2001. Copyright (c) 2006 by Marjorie Saiser. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:54 PM | TrackBack
Currently Reading
...er, watching, The Merchant of Venice.
My son has to read it for school, so I went shopping for the CD, as shown, and also the audio. When I was an English major in college, I read all my Shakespeare while listening to the great Caedmon recordings. It looks like the Caedmon versions are downloadable from Audible.com. I sort of doubt he will put the 2.5 hours on his MP3 player, but I will sneak it on to his notebook computer and see what he does with it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:19 PM
March 19, 2007
Thought for the Day
I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.
- Rumi
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:40 AM
March 17, 2007
How Are You Doing?
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 103
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.
How Are You Doing?
As much as you deserve it,
I wouldn't wish this
Sunday night on you--
not the Osco at closing,
not its two tired women
and shaky security guard,
not its bin of flip-flops
and Tasmanian Devil
baseball caps,
not its freshly mopped floors
and fluorescent lights,
not its endless James Taylor
song on the intercom,
and not its last pint of
chocolate mint ice cream,
which I carried
down Milwaukee Ave.
past a man in an unbuttoned
baseball shirt, who stepped
out of a shadow to whisper,
How are you doing?
Reprinted from "Barrow Street," Winter, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Rick Snyder. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM
February 22, 2007
The One I Think of Now
This week's offering from American Life in Poetry features Maine poet Wesley McNair.
American Life in Poetry: Column 100
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Here the Maine poet, Wesley McNair, offers us a vivid description of a man who has lived beyond himself. I'd guess you won't easily forget this sad old man in his apron with his tray of cheese.
The One I Think of Now
At the end of my stepfather's life
when his anger was gone,
and the saplings of his failed
nursery had grown into trees,
my newly feminist mother had him
in the kitchen to pay for all
those years he only did the carving.
"You know where that is,"
she would say as he looked
for a knife to cut the cheese
and a tray to serve it with,
his apron wide as a dress
above his workboots, confused
as a girl. He is the one I think of now,
lifting the tray for my family,
the guests, until at last he comes
to me. And I, no less confused,
look down from his hurt eyes as if
there were nothing between us
except an arrangement of cheese,
and not this bafflement, these
almost tender hands that once
swung hammers and drove machines
and insisted that I learn to be a man.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book is "The Ghosts of You and Me," David R. Godine, 2006. Reprinted from "Fire: Poems," published by David R. Godine, 2002, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
February 16, 2007
New Water
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 99
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn't resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet, Sharon Chmielarz.
New Water
All those years--almost a hundred--
the farm had hard water.
Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.
Sink and tub and toilet, too,
once they got running water.
And now, in less than a lifetime,
just by changing the well's location,
in the same yard, mind you,
the water's soft, clear, delicious to drink.
All those years to shake your head over.
Look how sweet life has become;
you can see it in the couple who live here,
their calmness as they sit at their table,
the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.
Reprinted by permission of Sharon Chmielarz, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Rhubarb King," Loonfeather Press, 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sharon Chmielarz. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM
February 12, 2007
Hope Springs Eternal!
Or, if you leave now and keep driving 24 hours, you will reach someplace warm and sunny.
The truck that will carry Red Sox team equipment to spring training arrived outside of Fenway Park at 5:30 a.m. this morning (live photo above), and will depart for Fort Myers in an official ceremony at 1 p.m.
For fans who want to see it off, the truck will leave from the players parking lot entrance on Van Ness St., and will be followed in procession by Fenway Ambassadors, Red Sox staff, and Wally the Green Monster tossing gifts from a flat-bed truck.
Kevin Carson of Atlas moving in Holliston is supervising the loading process.
"I love it," said Carson. "Its like Groundhog Day for two reasons: Its the first rite of spring, when the moving truck arrives. And its the same every year, just like the movie."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:16 AM
February 10, 2007
Favorite Movies
One of the great things about having teenagers is you begin to get to share with them some of the cultural touchstones of your life--books, music, and movies. In truth, we are pretty far apart on the first two, especially music. They like hip hop, which I don't, except for an odd song or two. But we have found common ground in movies, especially since I have two boys. I have always loved gangster movies, including the obvious ones like The Godfather saga. But my favorite gangster movie, bar none, is the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, which I watched with my boys the other night. It had been a few years since I watched, and it was just as good as I remembered it.
UPDATE: Speaking of gangster movies, The Departed comes out on Tuesday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:00 PM
February 8, 2007
Kissing a Horse
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 98
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A horse's head is big, and the closer you get to it, the bigger it gets. Here is the Idaho poet, Robert Wrigley, offering us a horse's head, up close, and covering a horse's character, too.
Kissing a Horse
Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red--
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years--who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and take his soft meaty underlip in my hands, press my man's carnivorous kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just so that I could smell the long way his breath had come from the rain and the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm.
Reprinted from "Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems," published in 2006 by Penguin. Copyright (c) Robert Wrigley, 2006, and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:55 PM
February 2, 2007
Someone Has a Birthday Today
If you have no idea, what the above text is about, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 AM
January 28, 2007
Theories of Everything
Fans of Roz Chast know about her new book, Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006. But I got an email from The New Yorker that linked me to this great video of Chast being interviewed by Steve Martin. It's a wonderful interview, and Chast is as charming and quirky as her cartoons.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
For Weeks After the Funeral
OK, here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 96
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family's adjustment to a death.
For Weeks After the Funeral
The house felt like the opera,
the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,
but the cast not yet arrived.
And if I said anything
to try to appease the anxious air, my words
would hang alone like the single chandelier
waiting to dim the auditorium, but still
too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light
announcing only itself, bringing more
emptiness into the emptiness.
Copyright (c) 2006 by Andrea Hollander Budy. First published in "Five Points" and included in her book, "Woman in the Painting." Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:04 PM
Young Man
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 095
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses--and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry--our preoccupation with aging and mortality.
Young Man
I seemed always standing
before a door
to which I had no key,
although I knew it hid behind it
a gift for me.
Until one day I closed
my eyes a moment, stretched
then looked once more.
And not surprised, I did not mind it
when the hinges creaked
and, smiling, Death
held out his hands to me.
Reprinted from "ABZ: A Poetry Magazine," No. 1, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006, by John Haines, whose most recent book of poetry is "Of Your Passage, O Summer," Limberlost Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:59 PM
January 1, 2007
Donald Murray
Boston Globe columnist and writing guru Donald Murray died on Saturday. The Globe has a nice tribute to him, and you can read some of his columns here. Murray had at least three great careers, first as a Puliter-prize winning journalist, then as a professor of writing at the University of New Hampshire, and then as a columnist for the Globe.
Murray was prolific. He published both personal and professional books, and was a mentor to scores of writers, writing teachers, and professors of writing. When I was in graduate school and considering a career as a writing teacher, Murray was a major figure in the field, as important for his encouraging presence as his cornerstone scholarship. After hearing Murray speak at a 4Cs conference, I bought his book, A Writer Teaches Writing. For me, Murray was the model writing teacher--an accomplished practitioner, a thoughtful and diligent scholar, and a teacher who encouraged his students and younger scholars. He will be missed.
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December 28, 2006
Home Fire
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 92
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Home is where the heart. . . Well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.
Home Fire
Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say "I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I've learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs and a bed where the moon comes in. I've thrown myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find that home is best after all. Home where I sit in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page of night, without waving or giving myself away, and return with my words burning like fire in the grate.
Reprinted from "Home Fires: Poems," Sow's Ear Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:13 PM
December 25, 2006
Dad, the Cook
I am not much of a cook, but every Christmas morning I make pancakes for the family. A few years ago, my friend David Guenette and I got to spend a few days in San Francisco together. David really knows the city, and I saw more of San Francisco in those few days than I had in the six first trips I had made there. One of the places he introduced me to was Sears Fine Food in Union Square, and their, "Sears’ World Famous 18 Swedish Pancake" breakfast. I loved the pancakes, I bought the batter, and now every Christmas we have a little taste of San Francisco here in Melrose.
Merry Christmas, David!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:04 AM
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, to friends near and far!
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December 22, 2006
Driving Through
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 91
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.
Driving Through
This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.
Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.
Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:10 PM | TrackBack
December 19, 2006
Quote of the Day
I am a writer and therefore an explorer. My immediate tribe remains the tribe of explorers.
-- Wole Soyinka
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:01 AM
December 2, 2006
A Chapter for the Ladies
The joys of Project Gutenberg: baseball, as viewed in 1888.
On account of the associations by which a professional game of base-ball was supposed to be surrounded, it was for a long time thought not a proper sport for the patronage of ladies. Gradually, however, this illusion has been dispelled, until now at every principal contest they are found present in large numbers. One game is generally enough to interest the novice; she had expected to find it so difficult to understand and she soon discovers that she knows all about it; she is able to criticize plays and even find fault with the umpire; she is surprised and flattered by the wonderful grasp of her own understanding, and she begins to like the game. As with everything else that she likes at all, she likes it with all her might, and it is only a question of a few more games till she becomes an enthusiast. It is a fact that the sport has no more ardent admirers than are to be found among its lady attendants throughout the country.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:10 PM | TrackBack
November 26, 2006
Philippe Noiret
One of my favorite actors, Philippe Noiret, died. The New York Times headline calls him, "an Actor of Elegance and Dry Humor," and I couldn't agree more. He starred in two of my favorite movies, Cinema Paradiso (imdb.com, amazon.com) and Il Postino (imdb.com, amazon.com), playing a Sicilian projectionist in the former and the poet Pablo Neruda in the latter. Yet both characters were the same, decent, kind man at their core.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:13 AM
November 24, 2006
Raking
I have been remiss. Here, after a long hiatus on this blog, is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 87
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair "bent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn."
Raking
Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,
make small leaf piles in the heat,
each pile a great joint effort,
like fifty years of marriage,
sharing chores a rusty dance.
In my own yard, the stacks
are big as children, who scatter them,
dodge and limbo the poke
of my rake. We're lucky,
young and straight-boned.
And I feel sorry for the couple,
bent like parentheses
around their brittle little lawn.
I like feeling sorry for them,
the tenderness of it, but only
for a moment: John glides in
like a paper airplane, takes
the children for the weekend,
and I remember,
they're the lucky ones--
shriveled Anna Bell, loving
her crooked Lane.
Reprinted from "Karaoke Funeral," Snake Nation Press, 2003, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2003 by Tania Rochelle. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly c