Monthly Archives: February 2012

The Philosophy of Walking, by John Cowper Powys

(Have you heard of John Cowper Powys? Neither had I, until Michael Perkins treated me to A Philosophy of Solitude published by Powys in 1933. It scintillates with arguments against group thinking. Here’s a passage about walking, sex, and the … Continue reading

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Why You Should Stand on a Mountain, from Joseph Wood Krutch

(By chance, the cover of my edition of Joseph Wood Krutch’s The Desert Year, first published in 1952, has a beautiful photograph of orange poppies flowering far into the distance below the towering pinnacles of Mount Ajo in southern Arizona. … Continue reading

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“Walking” By Edward Abbey

(From The Journey Home.) Whenever possible I avoid the practice myself. If God had meant us to walk, he would have kept us down on all fours, with well-padded paws. He would have constructed our planet on the model of … Continue reading

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Abraham Lincoln as the Catskill Eagle

“Embedded in the narrative of Moby-Dick is a metaphysical blueprint of the United States. Melville fills the book with telling similes and metaphors that allow a story set almost entirely at sea to evoke the look and feel of America … Continue reading

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Two fun poems from “Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology”

Two poems that I especially enjoyed in Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology use form to generate great wit out of the tired language of slogans. A Villanelle for Hard Times The unending crisis—begun by the cronies of Shrub. While many … Continue reading

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Herman Melville & Hart Crane

Nathaniel Philbrick has written a marvelous book, Why Read Moby-Dick? Let me quote: “Moby-Dick is a novel, but it is also a book of poetry. The beauty of Melville’s sentences is such that it sometimes takes me five minutes or … Continue reading

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The Beacon Mountain Poem

Long before I grew enamored with Beacon as NoBro (North Brooklyn) with its gentrifying main street of art galleries and funky coffee houses clustered in restored brick buildings at both ends, I encountered it as a prison town. (“Be-A-Con,” a … Continue reading

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My Elegy for Mauro Parisi

(Late in 2004 I returned from a long stay in the Adirondacks to learn that Mauro Parisi had taken his life. I hadn’t known him well, but what I had known hadn’t prepared me for this news. In this elegy … Continue reading

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Samuel Claiborne Recalls Mauro Parisi

Robert Milby’s poem, “The Hudson River in Winter,” brought back memories of Mauro Parisi, who took his life in 2004 by jumping off a bridge. Here are two elegies by Samuel Claiborne. Mauro You were the one I first noticed … Continue reading

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“The Hudson River in Winter” by Robert Milby

Morning Hudson River has ice on its face; Ice on its skin in late January. Ghosts fly low to kiss ice bouquets in its powerful arms, jeweled cloak; Hair rivulets and tribulations of Winter blue. I shout crow poetry from … Continue reading

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