PolyArchive

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down […]

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 […]

Review: Chasing the Bright Side by Jess Ekstrom This book covers a lot of the same ground that many positive-thinking self-help books do, but the author has some interesting stories to share. In particular, the relative she called “Uncle Bernie” became infamous when he stole away the wealth of many high-profile victims as well as […]

from Anima Hominis (Chap.5) William Butler Yeats We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. Unlike the rhetoricians, who get a confident voice from remembering the crowd they have won or may win, we sing amid our uncertainty; and, smitten even in the presence of the most […]

Love After Love Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your […]

The Woman That Had More Babies Than That Wallace Stevens I An acrobat on the border of the sea Observed the waves, the rising and the swell And the first line spreading up the beach; again, The rising and the swell, the preparation And the first line foaming over the sand; again, The rising and […]