Bent Toward Night
My first poetry book was about light in dark seasons, and was in part the result of wrestling with a fascination with darkness that I’ve carried most of my life. Ironically, but not unexpectedly, my life has never been soaked in darkness. There have been dark seasons, but most of them I have experienced from the outside, or they have turned out to be not so dark as expected. I have had my bouts with depression here and there, but nothing like those of people I know and love.
Read More ›Wash the Next Dish
Today, again, I am at the wide sink in our kitchen scrubbing up the dinner dishes.
Read More ›Practicing Prodigality with The National
The song that drew me to The National at first was “I Need My Girl,” and I heard it during a very discouraging season of my life. It’s a worn irony, this aching comfort of sad songs for sad people, but when I first encountered Matt Berninger’s grainy, plaintive lyric “I keep feeling smaller and smaller,” I listened to the song on repeat for two hours. Since then I’ve been a foul-weather follower, if you will. Every time that certain loneliness or melancholy hits harder than normal, I know I’ve got someone who will sit still with me in that place for a while until it’s time to move forward.
Read More ›What the Wind Goes Whispering: An Exploration of Longing in The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is perhaps my favorite book, or at least in my top ten. I rarely re-read books, but this one is an annual read for me, and only recently did I think to explore why I have loved and continue to love this story so much.
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