Couple of Cool Things

1. I just heard that I’m going to have two poems in The Georgia Review.
2. It looks very likely that I will be taking a group of Clarkson students to Vietnam next May.

Mentors

You hear a lot of talk about mentors and mentoring around a university and that’s certainly not a bad thing, but I wonder to what extent real mentoring can be institutionalized. I had a dream the night before last that has stuck with me — or parts of it have. I was traveling and having [...]

Convocation

Clarkson held its Convocation — our opening ceremony — last night and I marched in with the rest of the faculty (to bagpipes blaring!)  wearing full academic regalia, something I never did until I came to Clarkson, where they bought my gown and hood for me when I received tenure. The speaker was James Ransom, [...]

Another Kind of Life

Lt. William Calley stood before a Kiwanis Club meeting the other day and apologized for the My Lai massacre [also: 1, 2]. Reading the article, I take it as a sincere apology and a real expression of regret, though I understand how the prosecutor who tried Calley felt, too:
William George Eckhardt, the chief prosecutor in [...]

Back in the Classroom

I’ll be returning to the classroom after eight months away on Monday and I do so with a little trepidation, if not anxiety. I was on campus Friday and saw groups of new students roaming about, excited and curious and, probably, anxious. But mostly to me they looked tall and slim and terribly young. I [...]

A Notable Life

I had never heard of Adrien DeWind until I read his obituary in the NY Times this morning. (The older I get, the more I am drawn to the obits, with fear of personal extinction prompting me to recall the motto Samuel Johnson is said to have written on his watch dial: Work for the [...]

Meet James Ensor

Another review, by Dawn-Michelle Baude, of the James Ensor show at MOMA I mentioned back in June. I love the deadpan presentation of horrors — same as in the old Anglo-American murder ballad tradition — in Ensor’s painting. Oh, yes, it is a world of greed, hatred, and delusion (as the Buddha taught), but it is [...]

My Favorite Songwriter Who Isn’t Bob Dylan

A portrait of the young poet as an old man, or perhaps the old man as a young poet. In any case, here is an admiring profile of Leonard Cohen in the New Yorker.

Housekeeping

As the first step in a bit of blog remodeling, I have moved the list of links (blogroll)  to its own page, a link to which can be found along the top of the page or in the right sidebar. A few other elements are due for simplification over the next couple of weeks, with [...]

Sounds about Right

A description of meditation from someone far more experienced than I. I can’t imagine eleven hours a day of meditation, even if half of it was done walking. And as for discovering the “structure of [my] mind,” forget it. All I’ve noticed is that I have a fairly narrow set of repetitive thoughts. I suppose [...]

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