David Vincenti, Poet & Educator

“… the dogs will sing their whole bodies

in praise of you, and the redbuds will lay
down their pink crowns, and the rivers

will set their stones and ribbons
at your door…”

Reasons to Live A poem for Sunday

On 27 December 1571, Johannes Kepler was born in Weil der Stadt (Germany). He directed his interest later to mathematics, physics, and astronomy. After decades of thoroughly observing planetary motion, and utilizing the rich data material of Tycho Brahe in Prague, he formulated what are called Kepler’s laws regarding the planets’ orbits around the sun. While Tycho Brahe supported a geocentric approach, Kepler was convinced of Copernicus’ heliocentric appoach. In the turbulent times of the Thirty Years’ War in the first half of the 17th century, he suffered significant hardship and had to move several times, from Graz to Prague, Linz, Ulm and Regensburg. And despite all hardship and sufferings (he lost his first wife and several of his children), he remained convinced: “I think that an understanding of the cause of most things in the world can be derived from God's love for humanity.”

"The Road Not Taken" is one of Frost's most popular works. Yet, it is a frequently misunderstood poem, often read simply as a poem that champions the idea of "following your own path". Actually, it expresses some irony regarding such an idea. A critique in the Paris Review by David Orr described the misunderstanding this way:

"The poem's speaker tells us he "shall be telling", at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled … yet he has already admitted that the two paths "equally lay / In leaves" and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable."

Frost wrote the poem as a joke for his friend Edward Thomas, who was often indecisive about which route to take when the two went walking.
A New York Times book review on Brian Hall's 2008 biography Fall of Frost states: "Whichever way they go, they're sure to miss something good on the other path." Regarding the "sigh" that is mentioned in the last stanza, it may be seen as an expression of regret or of satisfaction. However, there is significance in the difference between what the speaker has just said of the two roads, and what he will say in the future. According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost's biographer, as Frost was once about to read the poem, he commented to his audience, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem—very tricky", perhaps intending to suggest the poem's ironic possibilities.

Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected." Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."

( Book: https://amzn.to/3WDigkC )

#language #english

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by Joe-Anne McLaughlin from _Jam_ from 2001

Full Poem: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it q***r To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. • • • • In the midst of life and its manifold troubles, surrounded even by our own inadequacy and unfulfilled potential, I think each of us has wondered, at certain times along the way, whether it is best to go on, or rather to give up. Whatever form this feeling may take for me or you, I think Frost can encourage us here. Those woods—the opportunity for a deep and pleasant rest that would, perhaps, surely follow after relinquishing our dreams or responsibilities—are always there for us to look at, to linger around, to contemplate. But, Frost reminds us, we cannot go to that place of rest just yet. We have promises, whether made to ourselves or others, that we must honour. In sum, there is a life still to live. We look forward to that deep and abiding rest, but we cannot have it yet. ~ A • Source for clip: A 1952 interview featuring Robert Frost, seated at his home in Ripton, Vermont. Clip is from the YouTube channel, ‘Manufacturing Intellect’, who does a lot of great work restoring old interviews, saving these otherwise lost pieces of culture. • • • • • • • • • #literature #literaturelover #robertfrost #literaturequotes #classicliterature #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #poetrygram #book #bookstagram #art #artgallery #inspiration #inspirational #explore #reading #explorepage #exploremore #fyp #fypシ #darkacademia #aesthetic #viral #vintage

Remember: art is cumulative.

Repost from @brianmedavoy • As an actor, you are your instrument. Everything you do to build a meaningful and enriched life will make you a better actor. #actorslife #alanrickman

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Want to get an inside look at the Solstice MFA experience? Sign up to audit a class or two during our upcoming January 2024 residency. For just $125 each, you can join and listen in on a selection of our two-hour Craft, Criticism, & Theory classes taught by faculty and special guests.

This winter, most of the offerings are fully online via Zoom, allowing you to audit from anywhere you have an internet connection. Additionally, the available classes span our five genre concentrations, with options for poets, comics writers, novelists, and others.

Register by Dec. 15 to secure your spot! https://www.lasell.edu/graduate-studies/academics/mfa-in-creative-writing/classes-for-audit.html

by WH Auden from _Collected Poems_ Edited by Edward Mendelson, 1976

High school teacher on a mission to preserve Navajo language for future generations — ABC News "I am saving my people's language from extinction."

“It is essential that Schulz’s sentiment not be misinterpreted or warped by our era’s perilous “tortured genius” myth of creativity. Too often we infer a false causality in the ongoing cultural narrative on the relationship between creativity and inner demons — Schulz was able to create his cartoon universe not because of his deep unhappiness but despite it…. That, perhaps, is the true gift of genius — to bring something meaningful to life despite how meaningless one’s own life may seem; to give some warmth to the world despite what the world may have coldly taken away.

Peanuts and the Quiet Pain of Childhood: How Charles M. Schulz Made an Art of Difficult Emotions “[Charlie Brown] reminded people, as no other cartoon character had, of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human — both little and big at the sam…

by Galway Kinney from _A New Selected Poems_ ( ), 2001

Lovely poem by Ed Romond featured today at Jayne Jaudon Ferrer's _Your Daily Poem_

"Each night I resolved to speak to him,
but each night I'd get too nervous,
so I said nothing as Perry stood
with me, resplendent in his tuxedo."

What I Wanted to Say to Perry Como by Edwin Romond - Your Daily Poem

“In one of his later poems, “That Evening at Dinner,” Mr. Ferry recounted a party among friends, including a widow who is recovering from a stroke and is carried from the car to the lobby to the elevator to the apartment. The poem goes on to detail not just the other guests but the books on the shelf, quoting a dozen lines from Samuel Johnson before offering what poet Lloyd Schwartz, another friend, described as a “devastating” final stanza:
�The dinner was delicious, fresh greens, and reds,�And yellows, produce of the season due,�And fish from the nearby sea; and there were also�Ashes to be eaten, and dirt to drink.”

David Ferry, revered poet and translator of Latin classics, dies at 99 He won the National Book Award for poetry and was widely acclaimed for his energetic translations of Horace and Virgil.

from Summer 2014 (Vol 64 No. 4)

Winter is coming?

by from _Some Holy Weight in the Village Air_, .arts 2006