Articles

In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton abortion decisions. Together, they represented a serious defeat for the unalienable right to life, the constitutional system of federalism, and the principle of democracy.

A friend of mine with a penchant for self-effacement said “There’s just not enough time to get the work done and procrastinate.” It is not that he only works well under pressure, he only works under pressure. He reads voraciously in history and poetry when neglecting his dissertation, and (to be honest) drinks too many gins and tonic over good conversation. In our modern age his habits fall under the general category of wasting time, along with, well, just about everything not productive or immediately relating to a “useful” end.

But as a profound poet trying to make a comfortable living I can’t really trouble myself about that fit audience though few. . . . Were I to start thinking about poetry in the social context, I’d be sliding down that slippery slope toward place, limits, and liberty. And then what? Localism? God help us!

Here is the great secret of my generation: What our parents gave us as a gift we have received as an entitlement. No one is not grateful for an entitlement. Indeed, everyone is resentful that it is not larger. Worse, we are resentful of everybody else's entitlements because they compete with our own. Politics because a matter of getting as large a share of the pie as you can, while giving as little as you can get away with.

I tend to think that slippery sidewalks are a sign of a broader pattern, in which people are less prepared to take responsibility for the inconvenience of ‘gray areas.’

He is resigned to the inertia of the old Spanish cult, and willing to just let it fade away. The voluptuousness of European culture had no way to gain traction in the purity of the New Mexican desert.

It is only our own town or neighborhood that is specific enough, and someday knowable enough, to enable a capable writer's imagination to imagine it clear and whole.

Devon, PA. My old friend and classmate, Jeremiah Chamberlin, writes in to the FPR ombudsman of a new venture he has undertaken to help...

The listlessness of modern death is that you might not even get a chance to show courage before you forget who you are.