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A Reader's Notebook

Links to phenomenal essays, stories, poems, and articles by other writers.

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"On Angels" - Haunting poem by Czeslaw Milosz

7/1/2016

 
PicturePhoto by Robert Hope Tyne & Wear Archives & Museum
​

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe in you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

— Czeslaw Milosz, in Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, Carolyn Forche, Ed.
​

Heartbreaking story, beautifully told

5/1/2016

 
Picture
PROUDFOOT
Slipping Away
BY SHANNON PROUDFOOT 
Robin Giles felt like she was missing a joke. It was Christmas morning in 2012, and she and her husband, Joël, were going through familiar traditions in their apartment in London, Ont. Later they’d go out to visit friends and family, but for now, it was just the two of them and their cats.
They opened their stockings first, and Robin was becoming more puzzled with each object she pulled out: They were utterly random... She kept thinking there was a punchline or a theme she wasn’t seeing. More...

A poem for all those dark nights

3/1/2016

 
Picture
BERRY
The Peace of Wild Things
BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
More...

On love and fatherhood - an exquisite short essay

12/21/2015

 
PictureLAWRIE
Who Am I, Lord, That You Should Know My Name?
BY BRUCE LAWRIE
​MY SIX-YEAR-OLD SON and I share a nightly ritual, just the two of us alone in the fading light of his bedroom. Matty, who is severely mentally retarded, loves routine because life comes at him as if blasted from a water cannon, the millions of sights and sounds we all unconsciously assimilate every second of every day an undecipherable roar. Even more than most children, Matthew craves the safety that comes from learning the rhythms of his life, thrives on repetition. More...

A famous author, a young reader, and a life-changing correspondence.

11/4/2015

 
Picture
MENDELSOHN
The American Boy
BY DANIEL MENDELSOHN
One spring day in 1976, when I was fifteen years old and couldn’t keep my secret any longer, I went into the bedroom I shared with my older brother, sat down at the little oak desk we did our homework on, and began an anguished letter to a total stranger who lived on the other side of the world. More...

On kindness and sorrow

10/7/2015

 
PictureSHIHAB NYE
Kindness
BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
More...

On fathers and grandfathers, love and loss

11/12/2012

 
PictureSANDERS
The Inheritance of Tools
BY SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS
At just about the hour when my father died, soon after dawn one February morning when ice coated the windows like cataracts, I banged my thumb with a hammer. Naturally I swore at the hammer, the reckless thing, and in the moment of swearing I thought of what my father would say: "If you'd try hitting the nail it would go in a whole lot faster. Don't you know your thumb's not as hard as that hammer?" More... 



On war and staying sane

10/15/2012

 
PictureDOYLE
Boots
BY BRIAN DOYLE
​My name is Jacqueline, you can call me Jackie. Until recently you could call me Sargeant. I am now retired from the service. I will be twenty-seven years old on Sunday, at fourteen hundred hours. I was a hematology nurse. I am in good health, considering. I have a dog named Gus. I live near the beach. I drink tea. I learned to love tea in Kirkuk. Some days we had tea ten times a day. We found a samovar and learned how to use it. More...

Funniest essay ever

10/12/2012

 
PictureWINTER
How I Met My Wife
BY JACK WINTER
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. More...


On loneliness and aging

9/18/2012

 
PictureMANSFIELD
Miss Brill
BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD 

     Though it was so brilliantly fine–the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques–Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting–from nowhere, from the sky. More...


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