PolyArchive

The Thing Is Ellen Bass to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit […]

Wielkie to szczęście Wisława Szymborska Wielkie to szczęście nie wiedzieć dokładnie, na jakim świecie się żyje. Trzeba by było istnieć bardzo długo, stanowczo dłużej niż istnieje on. Choćby dla porównania poznać inne światy. unieść się ponad ciało które niczego tak dobrze nie umie, jak ograniczać i stwarzać trudności. Dla dobra badań, jasności obrazu i ostatecznych wniosków wzbić się ponad czas, w którym to wszystko pędzi i wiruje. Z tej perspektywy […]

what Got him was Noth E.E. Cummings what Got him was Noth ing & nothing’s exAct ly what any one Living(or some body Dead like even a Poet)could hardly express what i Mean is what knocked him over Wasn’t (for instance)the Knowing your whole(yes god damned)life is a Flop or even to Feel how Everything(dreamed […]

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”–Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men  

A Man Said to the Universe Stephen Crane A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”  

The Summer Day Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of […]

Desiderata Max Ehrmann Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. […]

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. –Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking  

I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life […]

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” –Yoko Ono

Working in higher education, I deal with helicopter parents and lawnmower parents on a daily basis now. Overparenting is an incredible disservice to children and young adults. Not only do they experience setbacks, negative feedback, and garden-variety frustrations of life as insurmountable failures and barriers, they often lack the savvy to safeguard themselves from actual […]

You Want a Social Life, with Friends Kenneth Koch You want a social life, with friends. A passionate love life and as well To work hard every day. What’s true Is of these three you may have two And two can pay you dividends But never may have three. There isn’t time enough, my friends– […]

The End Mark Strand   Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end, Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end, Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never […]

Advice to My Son Peter Meinke (For Tim) The trick is, to live your days as if each one may be your last (for they go fast, and young men lose their lives in strange and unimaginable ways) but at the same time, plan long range (for they go slow; if you survive the shattered […]

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, […]