Meanderings of a mental health client in good company
Originally posted on My journey with AIDS…and more!: Would it be much of a surprise, even to the casual reader, that I am a mental health client? I have been…
poetry
Horace and him. And maybe me, too.
Horace and Me, subtitled Life lessons from an Ancient Poet, is a recent book by Harry Eyres (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2013) about his efforts to connect the dots of…
Saying Goodbye To Summer
There are so many ways we say goodbye to summer A woman’s voice singing by the canal The sharp contrasting light between buildings downtown The thinning tourist throngs The empty
Alexandra Leaving – a short history
This song is based on a poem by the Greek poet, Constantine P. Cavafy. His source material was a story from Plutarch about Mark Anthony, as he watched his allies…
These Old Bones
These old bones; You wouldn’t think they’d cut a rug jitterbug dance between the rain drops but once I could. Once I did. Danced to the music, lover in hand,…
The gems of Salomé
I was perhaps 11 or 12 when I first encountered Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Some of it, at least. At the time, I knew nothing of Wilde, his writing, or…
THE WEIGHT OF LOVE IN DEMENTIA CAREGIVING
Recently I had the immense pleasure of reading every poignant and fascinating word in a literary magazine called The Sun. The January, 2016 edition is on the subject of care.…
World Poetry Day
Today, March 21, is World Poetry Day. Do you care? Not that I’m cynical about poetry – I think it’s important stuff. Poetry is far more important than, say, hockey. The…
Reading Pablo Neruda
One hardly expects poets to generate spirited debate in the media these days*, but they did, not that long ago, well within my own lifetime. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was one…
Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964 Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) – full name Publius Ovidius Naso – is considered one of the greats of…
Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) - full name Publius Ovidius Naso - is considered one of the greats of Latin…
Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) - full name Publius Ovidius Naso - is considered one of the greats of Latin…
In Flanders Fields? It’s time to encourage another generation of school kids to read some better poems from the Great War
PHOTOS: In Flanders Fields? The reality of the Great war’s battlefields: squalor, incompetence, mechanized industrial death. Below: John McCrae, and a Great War poet still worth reading, Wilfred Owen. A…
The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at…
Halifax Double Book Launch: LUMPEN (Ed Mead) and ESCAPING THE PRISM (Jalil Muntaqim)
WHEN: Saturday, October 24at 7:00pm WHERE: Plan B Halifax, 2180 Gottingen Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 3B2 facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/624566001016376/ Comrades in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have organized the first joint book…
The Road Not Taken
I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about.…
Reading Tennyson’s Ulysses
Last weekend, while watching the delightful movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I heard Bill Nighy make a wedding speech that included lines from one of my favourite poems:…
Another Archy Poem
Most of Don Marquis’ Archy pieces were written in lowercase. The literate cockroach, we learned, would stand on the typewriter and dive, head first, onto the keys. But this way,…
The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at…