“I never change; I’m too stuck in my ways.” There is a hope that we forget that “corrupt but necessary” college admissions process once in college. This, of course, is hypocritical and hopeless, for who hasn’t heard that kid boast … Read More
I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a quiet settlement eight miles from Copley Square. The Marathon’s route follows Commonwealth Avenue through Newton into Boston. My house is a block from the Marathon’s 20-mile marker, in the middle of Heartbreak Hill, the most notorious of a series of four steep ascents that runners must endure as they pass through the city.
If you have never heard Van Morrison’s yearning, keening voice—its blues and jazzy swag , the way it stretches words into birds that fly you to heaven, its worn beauty—well, then, you’ve never heard it. But I bet you have; … Read More
“When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.”
At school, I no longer had to wait. I was free to do as I pleased and ceased observing the day altogether. But strangely, immediately, Shabbat presented itself to me in a transfiguring light, the radical antidote to all that displeased me here.
The son-poem continues / by these pastoral lines , / in my ears put / by father , as / words of the mouth of / the poem ‘ s / father , on a short morning / saunter / he set out on alone /
Egypt is the place to be right now. Personally, I don’t want to be there, but it is certainly the best place to be. I am jealous of those who are there right now. Before I explain why, a little … Read More
