Posts Tagged ‘Peggy Rosenthal’
Poetry Friday: “March: Saint John the Divine”
March 15, 2019
“These Lenten weeks are wordless, gray and slow.” It takes poet Elizabeth Spires four verses to get to this line. Before this, the poem’s speaker imagines a more colorful and lively season, as the church garden’s peacock “spread its glorious tail.” The feathers remind the speaker “of doves descending, the promise of a season yet…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “I Stand and Knock”
January 25, 2019
What pulls me into this poem is the way we’re drawn into a cosmic drama which is, finally, salvific. The title, combined with the very first lines, brings to mind Matt. 7:7, “knock and the door will be opened to you” and Rev. 3:20, “behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Holding these lines…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Shoemaker in Fallujah”
January 11, 2019
The shoemaker follows human life by means of the specific experiences that feet lead us through.
Read MoreWhen Publishers or the Public Reject You
November 26, 2018
“Van Gogh did not sell a single painting during his lifetime, became increasingly unhinged, and shot himself at the age of thirty-seven.” So writes poet Jeanne Murray Walker in her engaging essay in the current issue of Image (#98), “Sandals on the Ground: My Pilgrimage with the Sonnet.” Walker’s sentence about Van Gogh reminds me…
Read More200 Posts in a Decade of Blogging: Part 2
October 24, 2018
I was invited to write for the Good Letters blog at its inception over ten years ago because of my long-time interest in writing about the experience of reading poetry: how the poetry I read becomes intertwined with my life, and vice versa. One such post, “This Solitude We Learn to Bear,” that reaches for…
Read More200 Posts in a Decade of Blogging: Part 1
October 22, 2018
This is my 200th post for Good Letters. There’s something about round-number occasions, isn’t there? They move us to reflection, which is what this anniversary has done for me. I’m recalling how Good Letters got started, and how our blog has developed since then. Late in 2008, several of us who’d been connected with Image…
Read MoreRemembering Sassy
September 25, 2018
Sassy wasn’t her real name, and she wasn’t “sassy” at all. But as happens with many grandparents, the oldest grandchild names her—and the name sticks. I was that oldest grandchild. Her name was Sarah, which is what I’d hear the grownups call her. But when I tried, at age one-and-a-half or so, to say “Sarah,”…
Read MoreThe Disastrous Wizard of Oz
September 6, 2018
My teenage granddaughter Phoebe was visiting us from out of town. On these visits, we always choose a movie for evening viewing. “What about The Wizard of Oz? I think it was the first movie we watched together here, when you were about five,” I suggested at dinner. Phoebe demurred. “The producer did bad things…
Read MoreCan a Racist Drive a Prius? Stereotypes and the Single Story
August 6, 2018
I think it’s good for me when my stereotypes of others are challenged. Like this recent experience. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood and approached a parked Jeep from the rear. Covering the spare tire hung on the back was a huge American flag with the words “The Only One.” My instinctive response,…
Read MoreWon’t You Be My Neighbor?
July 9, 2018
Our son Eric was four years old. My husband George, after teaching all day at Tufts University, would walk over to Tufts Day Care Center, pick Eric up, and walk home with him, Eric riding in the carrier on George’s back. As soon as they’d get in the house, they’d both plop down in front…
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