Category: the poet at large
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Confessions old and new
For those who’ve travelled down any road of literary discovery, I don’t think it is surprising for me to say that I recently began following a path of study that led me to insights I was surprised to find. Not so much surprised at the findings, but surprised at myself for what I had missed.…
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“a fly in the soup,” on being a young writer in Chicago
For the uninitiated, the main entry hall of Oak Park River Forest High School (Oak Park, a suburb just adjacent to Chicago’s West Side) has a special andproud feature identified by students as the “wall of fame.” It consists of neat rows of framed pictures of notable graduates of the school. Some more recognizable than…
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Think Of It As Prayer
Considering our cozy 4 1/2 square miles, there are a lot of churches in Oak Park, the Chicago suburb where I’ve spent the last 17 years. No judgment intended, but there is quite a potpourri of paths to salvation right outside most of our doors. Though I was raised Catholic, I enjoy Unity Temple these…
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Finding The Moveable Feast
It is time again for A Moveable Feast. This is my fourth time with Hemingway’s famous memoir about being a young and poor writer in Paris during the 1920s, but this time I am reading the new “restored” edition. There are subtle changes to the text and “new” chapters culled from Hemingway’s papers, but the…