From Denial to Acceptance: An Essay on Aging
When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a middle-aged man suffering from hypertension and pre-diabetes. I see a head of thick brown hair. A still-youthful…
How to Live One’s Story
When I’ve talked about the need to defend one’s story, I’ve had in mind my experience that ill-wishers can show astonishing astuteness in picking out key elements…
I Saw An Old Man Smile, Enjoying a Book
I saw an old man smile, enjoying a book, And leaves died lovely deaths in autumn; A skipped rock trickled to the creek’s bottom, And a poor…
Rural Requiem
For Margaret Eddowes Now’s the time to set sorrow to a song, While all the days of summer start, And renew the duties that belong To feeling,…
The Women Will Be Here Soon: A One-Act Play
"I seem to see all the most desperate of men threatening new false denunciations." - Boethius A TWO-CAR GARAGE, disconnected from its home. A WINDOWPANE frames…
An Aspiring Architect Goes to Washington
After Dana Gioia He pondered the architecture when he visited Washington, pondered its form and its meaning. He had grown tired of the ugly post offices and…
Looking for the Perfect Present
In a bookstore, searching for a gift, the book that will never be forgotten— but everything can be forgotten. In a forest, therefore, looking for the confusion…
Time Caught in the Broken Things
We thought those old cars could never die smiles grimly given tobacco juice brown and bitter curses drawled under the breath the foundation of things. --broken crankshaft,…
The Time We Have: Life and Ideas
Close observers of contemporary postmodern philosophy will notice that postmodern philosophy is commensurate with pack animals, for both operate on a deterministic model. How so? Consider that…
Nostalgia By Night
The night is young, but everyone is old In this town's restaurants and whiskey bars. I dream of fireside wisdom—truths retold— Yet all I hear? Worn lies…
Rushed Gods
The shades of night engulf the beaming day As metal and plastic cars race each free way. Was our life always fast? The forlorn moon can’t wait…
from Spiking the Canon: A Poem
Ulysses The critics give it ten out of ten, the literary equivalent of Zen. Is it Joyce’s folly or his ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’? Perhaps you should…
Not Vanity: A Poem
It is not difficult to define the place that physical labour should occupy in a well-ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core. - Simone Weil…
The Ideology of Transparency: Creating the New Sodom and Gomorrah
“Let us be straightforward and say that our age is not that of secrets, but of their opposite, transparency. There is even, more or less confusedly, an…
The Death that Makes Life Bearable
Is there a place for “the question of death” in the education of human beings and citizens? What might that place be? How might the question be…