Spent quite a bit of time looking at the details of these historic photos—a trove of glass-plate negatives that were nearly thrown away until artist and photographer Terri Capucci recognized their value and rescued them from the bin.
is so good at framing questions about fiction and writing—and existing—while the world feels so lost in a way that is insightful and so wise.Such a beautiful concept that strives to integrate all generations of community in designing a new definition of assisted living.
Hearing Judie Dench recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 impromptu shows how poetry can indeed cast a spell.
“I destroyed my old personality and created a new one.” A new exhibition of the works of women artists who created gender-neutral identities.
Another ‘discovery’ of a forgotten Viking woman who was honored as ‘queen’ with four famous runestones.
A strange rock in the 15th c. Melun Diptych appears to be a Stone Age hand axe—but why it is featured, and what it signifies remains a mystery.
The many women who have—and continue to be—written out of scientific history, despite the recent Nobel Prize in medicine that was awarded to Katalin Karikó.
"Some critics thought she was mean," Page said. "All the very famous women writers were usually ending their stories with a man and a woman falling in love and living happily thereafter. Dawn had seen enough of life to realize, well, sometimes that's the case but it's not what usually happens in the world." The writer Dawn Powell’s forgotten writing, admired by Hemingway1 and critics, among many others.
And finally, this poem by Denise Levertov found me several times this week, from the collection, Candles in Babylon.
Beginners
“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea— “
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
— so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
— we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.
— Denise Levertov
The photo of the trees and mountain tops brought to mind this lovely poetry:
Autumn Birch
Freya Rohm
Of gravity the trees
are borne—
sap, sucked into sockets
of root and marrow—
disrobing at the first cool
breath of equinox—
open jugulars of autumn
enameling earth.
We scrape and gather the lost fire—
put out smoke and ash
refuse the wicking
downward pull
that steadies trunk and limb—
whose heights
stand bare-skinned and
ready for the ravening
dark.
The Judie Dench clip was so good.
You might already be familiar with this site, but just in case:
https://www.poetryoutloud.org/
Oh the Hemingway takedown was 👩🏼🍳💋