Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Saturday, April 8, 2017

In This Corner: National Poetry Month



I'm pleased to introduce poet Dave Healy from St. Paul, MN. Retired director of the University of Minnesota's Writing Center, he now occupies his time with freelance writing and helping others write poetry and memoirs

Remember my previous post? About the world being too much with us? Here's Dave's response. What can each of us do to put our house in order? Leave your ideas in the comments.

This Corner

The world is too much with us
old Bill said.
Perhaps the world is too much
because of us.
Too much to comprehend
too much to fix.
A corner of the world
is quite enough to handle
to brighten and green
to tend
to keep well swept
to leave better than we found it.
Huxley said the only corner
of the universe
you can be certain of improving
is your own self.
Bullshit.
Let us risk uncertainty and
forego self-improvement.
Let us join those from
earth’s four corners
and put this great grand
house of ours in order.


Friday, April 7, 2017

The World is Too Much With Us: National Poetry Month

(Photo by Mick Baker, https://www.flickr.com/photos/36593372@N04/8573457815,(CC BY-ND 2.0))

The news is sometimes too much to take. It is mostly bad, often tragic, sometimes heart-rending. And in today's world of 24/7/365 newsfeeds, it's everywhere. I'm guessing that you, like me, are sometimes overwhelmed by it. Yet we cannot escape it, and as awful as it is, we need to know. That's when this poem comes to mind, and if possible, I go for a walk and appreciate nature. How do you cope with news overwhelm? Let me know in the comments below.

The World Is Too Much With Us

Related Poem Content Details

The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— 
Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


Saturday, March 3, 2012

Bearing Witness: Women's History Month

(© Copyright David Hawgood and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Women's History Month usually reaches back across the decades or even centuries for examples of women who broke ground in various life arenas. Today, I'm going to reach back just a little while and mention Marie Colvin, American journalist for the London Sunday Times.

If the name sounds familiar, it's because she recently made news as one of several journalists killed during a shelling in Homs, Syria. Or maybe you heard her name in the news a few years ago when she lost her eye during Tamil Tiger attacks in Sri Lanka. Or you may have wondered about a picture of a woman reporter wearing an eye patch.

(photo by syriana2011 http://www.flickr.com/photos/syriana2011/5650171497/in/photostream/ creative commons)

Generally, reporters are supposed to get their bylines into the news, not themselves. Why would a middle-aged woman continue to put herself in dangerous places? Marie Colvin went where others were afraid to go so that she could bear witness to what was happening in the world, according to NPR's Phillip Reeves. Read the transcript here. Reeves closes his remarks with this: "She stressed the importance of continuing to cover conflicts. She acknowledged it is very dangerous. But she said people have a right to know what their governments are doing in their name, a right that Colvin and several others have just died for."

This report, and this one from the New Yorker, and this fabulous portrait and article with links from BoingBoing (caution: language alert) made me appreciate Ms. Colvin and everyone else who seeks to bear witness and bring on-the-spot information to the rest of us.

And I ask myself and you, gentle reader, to what do you bear witness? Is it big enough to stake our lives on?