Sunday, June 15

To those who spend Sunday afternoons writing.



I made no record of when this appeared in The New Yorker but it was a while ago. From a scrapbook I came across as I putter and "organize" my blogging room in delicious solitude.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:17 PM

    Well, there it is in a nutshell. And I have to work. So what gets cut out? Um....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know there's another blog for this...but I thought I'd share it anyway here.
    I went to a Quaker wedding yesterday. It was so moving, simple, unpretentious and beautiful that it was almost enough to make one believe in marriage again.

    Anyway...I came across this poem. I don't know if Phillip Larkin is or was a Quaker...but here it is:

    The Mower, by Philip Larkin, from Collected Poems

    The mower stalled, twice;
    kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,Killed.
    It had been in the long grass.
    I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
    Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably.
    Burial was no help:
    Next morning I got up and it did not.
    The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same;
    we should be careful of each other,
    we should be kind
    While there is still time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. first the koch, then the larkin. such a fine beginning to this post-father's day.
    and i'm reminded once again that i never fully appreciated either of them until after they died. koch especially. his talent was far larger than it would seem to the casual reader.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yup! Nice piece!

    Back when I was teaching, I used to tell my students there was homework, sleep, and socializing, and most nights, they could only pick 2 out of the 3, and they had to figure that balance out. Those wacky priorities...

    ReplyDelete

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