“The universe is a continuous web.
Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.”
Stanley Kunitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, died on this day in 2006.
Welcome to Ronkville.
Established: 2007
Population: 1 (though we get a lot of visitors passing through)
This site aggregates posts from several of my blogs and other sites. Click the timestamp to go to the full post or source. And read The Ronkville Morning Bugle to keep up on what news is buzzing around our little hamlet today.
Won't you come and see loneliness?
Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
~Basho
Go ahead. Ask me.
Established: 2007
Population: 1 (though we get a lot of visitors passing through)
This site aggregates posts from several of my blogs and other sites. Click the timestamp to go to the full post or source. And read The Ronkville Morning Bugle to keep up on what news is buzzing around our little hamlet today.
Won't you come and see loneliness?
Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
~Basho
Go ahead. Ask me.
May 14, 2012
Remembering Stanley Kunitz
May 8, 2012
Today is the birthday of poet Gary Snyder
. He was born in San Francisco in 1930.
He’s associated with the Beat Generation and read at the famous Six Gallery Reading in 1955, when Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” for the first time.
Most of the Beats were city kids, and they found Snyder fascinating because he grew up in the woods of Washington and Oregon, was interested in nature, and had worked as a logger, a seaman, and a fire lookout.
He was a student of anthropology and Asian culture, a dedicated Zen Buddhist, and an ecological poet. Lawrence Ferlinghetti called him “The Thoreau of the Beat Generation.”
Snyder has lived in the same house since 1970. The house was built by hand on a 100-acre plot of land in California’s Sierra Nevada.
“We built it with a crew of boys and girls who were almost all in their first year out of college, without any construction experience of any kind, all with hand tools and no electricity,” Snyder said. “Everyone was working, cleaning, cooking, and learning equally. The subtext is that the ’60s sometimes worked.”
Source: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org
May 8, 2012
April 23, 2012
"All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold"
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold"
— William Shakespeare - was born on this day (and died on this day in 1616 at the age of 52)
April 19, 2012
"Listen, whatever it is you try to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you like the dreams of your body."
— –Mary Oliver
April 15, 2012
"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."
— Plato
April 11, 2012
"Each moment is a place
you’ve never been."
you’ve never been."
—
Mark Strand
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet was born on this day in 1934.
April 9, 2012
"Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will."
—
Charles Baudelaire
March 26, 2012
On Robert Frost’s birthday
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year…
“A Prayer in Spring” by Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet who is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of his generation, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
March 19, 2012
William Carlos Williams
New Jersey doctor and poet William Carlos Williams was born the first of two sons of an English father and a Puerto Rican mother of French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish ancestry.
Williams grew up in Rutherford, where he spent many years of his life as an adult caring for his patients.
I just discovered that his father’s mother was coincidentally named Emily Dickinson.
February 24, 2012
"I don’t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn’t just decide I was going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to live."
—
A quote from Jane Hirshfield
She went to Princeton, where she was in the first graduating class to include women in 1973.
She published her first poem not long after, then went of to northern California to study Buddhism for the next eight years, during which time she didn’t write at all. I suppose that’s part of what the quote is all about…
One of her “Teahouse Poems”
It Was Like This: You Were Happy (excerpt)
It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life…
January 25, 2012
Burns Night
Tonight might be Burns Night somewhere near you. That means haggis, music, poetry readings, and malts.
It’s an important date in the Scottish calendar and of all things Scottish - and a way to celebrate poet Robert Burns.
First held in Aryshire, Scotland at the end of the 18th century by Robert Burns’ friends on the anniversary of his death (21 July), the date has subsequently been moved to his birthday – 25 January.
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