In her fifth collection, Rebecca Foust has managed rhythm and rhyme in ways that speak of someone who knows the rules so fully that she has permission to depart from them.
It is hard to imagine the world without Facebook, but not hard to long for the day when liking something meant you had thought about or experienced it for more than three seconds.
In the face of what is wrong with thoroughbred racing, the sight of a long shot-- ridden by a rookie, named for a ritual between husband and wife-- closing in on and beating a hands-down favorite was a beautiful thing to see.
“I’ll be on a ladder all day. Checking email only intermittently.” So ended a recent message from a dear friend. She’ll be 66 this week.
When you mention Valentine’s Day, put me on the side of the line that says, “I’d rather it didn’t exist.” Still, there was a time when I anticipated this day with the feeling it seems intended to evoke.
Come, Thief is a book to own, a book to give and above all a book of poems to be read. To yourself on a rainy evening when you are alone. Aloud on a morning when you need extra courage before leaving the house. To a loved one whom you want to treasure by giving a treasury.
I didn’t call foul on Moneyball until the day after seeing it. It wasn’t long, however, before hindsight brought the realization that the portrayal of women in the film is not about the ethos of baseball, but about a sensibility that is Neanderthal.
Did September 11, 2011, reconstitute any of those equations? Put another way, did the marathon of remembering restore us as a nation in any way? Strangely, I believe the answer may be yes. We may not have gotten back to the innocence of a decade ago, but we just might have healed a bit in places where we weren’t even aware of the hurt.
Children of the children of the Great Depression learned to make the most of what was at hand. August 1967 was about making more of what one young woman had at her disposal and making a kind of magic in the process.
Maybe, just maybe, you or a friend of yours (or both of you) should consider a poetry workshop.
This is a woman who is going to swim with a ticket to ride to the pinnacle of athletic accomplishment. Her team of 22 people will have her back. All of us will have her in our hearts.