BY JEDIDIAH PASCHALL
There are few poems in the English language as bone-chilling as WB Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. This year marks the century anniversary of a poem that captivated and terrified the modern world. One needn’t be familiar with Yeats’ Irish nationalism, Theosophical inclinations, or his occultism to gain entrance into his imagistic rendering of the collapse […]
Read MoreI first read these words in the basement level of a Chicago bookstore close to twenty years ago and I knew Lisel Mueller was a woman to be trusted: In Passing How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to […]
Read MoreI am not a learned man, as I sit in this empty room I admit the diplomas on my wall are certificates of debt – nothing more; perhaps if my learning did not come through an untamed curiosity and fits of wild distraction I could speak higher of my higher education. My library is […]
Read MoreIt’s hard to live somewhere in between the gutter and the stars to sing rhapsodic songs in the tangled wreckage of yesterday’s swirling storms Harder still to believe silence isn’t a threat but a holy invocation into an unspoken litany an invitation that melts memory of the mire and night’s indigo shine into a […]
Read MoreDon’t worry child, the flickers aren’t the horror film projection of your nightmares, or the fiery arrows of an intemperate god. The rumbles aren’t the drumbeat of giants warring in the sky, or boulders crashing down the mountain. The sheets of water that beat the window beside your bed aren’t a wind-blown flood, or a […]
Read MoreWhen I think of progress, I see men bounding on the moon In a ballet of awkward beauty, And I hear the laughter of children Bouncing on the playground During a recess potato-sack race, Moved forward by an unassuming bliss. Which makes me wonder what it was like To live in a country that […]
Read MoreSay not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. Ecclesiastes 7:10 I went mining for memories in music made old by decades and dust, Only to find yesterday’s songs stuck in yesterday. There was the ballad […]
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