PolyArchive

Your Brain, Explained: What Neuroscience Reveals About Your Brain and its Quirks Marc Dingman ‎Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2019 256 pages From the publisher: Sleep. Memory. Pleasure. Fear. Language. We experience these things every day, but how do our brains create them?   Your Brain, Explained is a personal tour around your gray matter. Neuroscientist Marc Dingman […]

Health is Membership Wendell Berry Wendell Berry delivered a speech at the conference “Spirituality and Healing,” at Louisville, Kentucky, on October 17, 1994. Below is an excerpt: So far, I have been implying my beliefs at every turn. Now I had better state them openly. I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John […]

Sea Surface Full Of Clouds Wallace Stevens I In that November off Tehuantepec, The slopping of the sea grew still one night And in the morning summer hued the deck And made one think of rosy chocolate And gilt umbrellas. Paradisal green Gave suavity to the perplexed machine Of ocean, which like limpid water lay. […]

The Sky is Low, the Clouds are Mean Emily Dickinson The Sky is low — the Clouds are mean. A Travelling Flake of Snow Across a Barn or through a Rut Debates if it will go — A Narrow Wind complains all Day How some one treated him Nature, like Us, is sometimes caught Without her Diadem […]

Surprised by Joy William Wordsworth Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division […]

The Dictionary Charles Simic Maybe there is a word in it somewhere to describe the world this morning, a word for the way the early light takes delight in chasing the darkness out of store windows and doorways. Another word for the way it lingers over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses someone let drop on […]

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times Katherine May Riverhead Books 256 Pages Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from […]

As I Grew Older Langston Hughes It was a long time ago. I have almost forgotten my dream. But it was there then, In front of me, Bright like a sun– My dream. And then the wall rose, Rose slowly, Slowly, Between me and my dream. Rose until it touched the sky– The wall. Shadow. […]

A Birthday Christina Rossetti My heart is like a singing bird                   Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree                   Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell                   That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these                   Because my love is […]

It’s rare that I feel pure jealousy of an author, but Mr. Towles manages to write exactly the books I wish I could. As a reasonably witty, well-educated Russian scholar with an overactive imagination, you might think I’d be capable of writing something as charming and transporting as A Gentleman in Moscow, but… alas. I […]

Music A Subversive History by Ted Gioia Perseus Books, Basic Books 528 pages, published 2019. From the publisher: “A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched” (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions […]

Sonnet XXV George Santayana As in the midst of battle there is room For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth; As gossips whisper of a trinket’s worth Spied by the death-bed’s flickering candle-gloom; As in the crevices of Caesar’s tomb The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth: So in this great […]

Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace is the second book in a cozy mystery series by Patricia Marcantonio. Released 11th Feb 2020 by Crooked Lane Books, it is 324 pages long and available in hardcover and ebook formats. Despite being the second book in the series, it works well as a standalone. This book features […]

The Far Field Theodore Roethke I. I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel, Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula, The road lined with snow-laden second growth, A fine dry snow ticking the windshield, Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic, And no lights behind, […]

The Emperor of Ice-Cream Wallace Stevens Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only […]