Take a second look …
The yellow eyes of the Saw-whet Owl are so startling, their gaze so steady, that we tend to ignore everything else. It’s easy to miss the trace of blood just below the owl’s bill, a smear of something that changes the way we look at the bird, that deepens our understanding of it. What discoveries might we make if we took that second look more often, if we trained ourselves to see?
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Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana(1937)
What I’m Reading Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (1937) An account in diary format of a trip through Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan that Byron made in 1933, primarily to examine the architecture of medieval monuments and places of worship. I found enthusiastic references to this author and his works in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Broken Road and Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade. The American writer Paul Fussell said The Road to Oxiana was to travel literature what The Wasteland was to poetry and Ulysses to fiction. Needless to say, I came to the book with high … Read more
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Poets against Tyranny: Don’t Pay the Dane-Geld!
The last sentence in Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry is the only one most people remember: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” But the argument that precedes this statement is even more provocative than its conclusion. Shelley argues that poets have always had a tangible effect on the laws that govern human societies because their poems exploit our innate ability to recognize what is true and beautiful in life. “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.” The secret to poetry’s persuasive power is the intense pleasure it provides, which inspires people to … Read more
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“Good Morning Blues:” Della Reese Live (1966)
Am I the only one who still remembers and esteems this album? I bought my copy at Spec’s Music store in Miami the year it was released. I was fourteen years old and listened to the LP so many times that I wore down the grooves on the vinyl, and the record snapped, crackled, and popped every time I played it. Della Reese had a late career as a TV actor (Chico and the Man, Touched by an Angel). That is probably how people remember her now, if they remember her at all. Most have forgotten that in her youth … Read more
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