— Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough … Continue reading
by Marge Piercy The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek … Continue reading
This time, it started on November 24. Still my most favorite time of the year. It apparently wasn’t for Emily Dickinson, who wrote considerably less generously on the topic: LXXX The sky is low, the clouds are mean. A travelling … Continue reading
— Minnie Bruce Pratt from Inside the Money Machine On the way to work, I’m given a ratchety static of rain hitting cement and the roadway. Going home, against the dark screen of sky, I see the trees blazing up … Continue reading
—by Adam Zagajewski Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the … Continue reading
Late August — Margaret Atwood This is the plum season, the nights blue and distended, the moon hazed, this is the season of peaches with their lush lobed bulbs that glow in the dusk, apples that drop and rot sweetly, … Continue reading
This conjunction doesn’t even make sense inside my own head yet, but I’m parking them all here for further contemplation. First these two, found in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places: From … Continue reading
A wonderful snippet sent over by my dear friend Jenny: Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light, full of snow, full of concentration. It’s from Mary Oliver’s “At the Lake,” and it made me feel so seen.
The old city of saints opens its hand again this morning, its claw of money and glass rosaries. I never say no. Together we have broken bread, promises, hearts, whatever drags beneath our muddy river. I put my bare hand … Continue reading
The tree is walking around in the rain moving past us in the squishy gray. It has a job to do. It picks life out of the rain like a blackbird in a cherry orchard. As soon as the rain … Continue reading
Welcome to Thinkery, est. 2003. At the moment, I'm an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Syracuse University. I'm interested in new media, historical conceptions of authorship, and human/machine agency. I write about all of that elsewhere, mostly, and keep this space for other areas of investigation about the world: namely, cooking, gardening, and travel.
