Readers Unbound is privileged to welcome Pearl McHaney as today’s guest blogger. Many readers shy away from poetry, afraid of not understanding, expecting not to been entertained. American poet and pediatrician William Carlos Williams wrote a long love poem titled “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.” Near its end, I find my mantra for the significance […]
Category Archives: Poets/ Poetry/ Performances
What do the Daniel Island Historical Society, of Daniel Island, South Carolina (DIHS), and a Haiku have in common? On the surface, it would appear as if they were unrelated. Yet digging deeper into our past reveals that history may be their common thread. Despite today’s ‘modern-day’ era which continuously shouts, ‘What’s next? And what’s […]
This amazing memoir begins with tragedy—Ficre Ghebreyesus, husband of renowned poet Elizabeth Alexander, dies suddenly of a massive heart attack while on a treadmill at their home just four days after his 50th birthday party. Although it may be categorized as a “grief memoir,” Light of the World is not a book that dwells solely on the […]
As summer turns to fall, the season rolls into a celebration of Jewish holidays, one stacked upon another. This week is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and it begins a ten day period known as the days of repentance. A traditional prayer, the Unetaneh Tokef, said during both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, acknowledges […]
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep…. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die. (Excerpts from “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” by Mary Frye) Once upon a time I would have found this poem […]
When I was in Camden, Maine, in late May, I took the Edna St. Vincent Millay walking tour. Granted, more than 100 years after this Pulitzer Prize-winning poet left the town where she grew up, there isn’t much left to see of her. The small house where she lived on Chestnut Street, a block away […]
I have never been one to read a lot of poetry—love to read almost anything, including cereal boxes but was not drawn to verse. That changed somewhat last October when I was visiting Washington, DC with a friend, and we saw a long, chiseled inscription in the curving granite wall surrounding our Metro station at Dupont […]
Since retiring in 2003, I have been fighting getting old. Although I was once an English teacher, I was determined to reinvent myself at age fifty-four. I took drawing, pottery, and watercolor classes at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in DeKalb County. I joined the East Lake YMCA for tai chi and yoga classes. My “exercises,” […]
T. S. Eliot may have felt that “April is the cruellest Month,” but not in lovely Decatur, Georgia, where Spring has at long last arrived. It’s short-sleeve weather full of sunny days and blooming trees. We are bound today for Agnes Scott College’s McCain Library to view the Robert Frost Collection, a fitting pilgrimage for National […]
The following is a reprint of an article I did several years ago for my clan journal, Journal of the Clan Campbell Society (North America). (Burns is a sept of Clan Campbell.) January 25th is a day of celebration around the world. From Montana to Moscow, India to Indiana, admirers of Robert Burns honor him with […]
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