#heaney

The Dodgers made one more roster move to close out the regular season, calling up pitcher Landon Knack to provide coverage on the final day of the regular season. It’s the first time back in the majors in nearly four months for Knack, who went through the grinder that is the Pacific Coast League with a 7.32 ERA with 14 home runs allowed in 82 1/3 innings since June, with 75 strikeouts and 46…

At first glance, the analytic philosophy of Saul Kripke, the dramatic poetry of Seamus Heaney, and the political statecraft of Queen Elizabeth I could not seem more disparate. What could a 20th-century logician, a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, and a 16th-century monarch possibly share? Yet, beneath the surface, each grappled with language, identity, and authority in redemptive ways. Each, in…

Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images The great Irish writer Seamus Heaney often spoke of the good that poetry could do, both for individuals and the world at large. To that point, he once lamented in jest that “poetry can’t be administered like an injection.” Admittedly, I stumbled upon that quotation by accident, deep within an internet rabbit hole I tumbled down while researching the American baseball…

This morning the overnight snow as changed to freezing rain and now a wintry mix. The forecast is for heavy rain later. I’ve just finished Donald Hall’s A Carnival of Losses. The book is a blend of memoir and ruminations about the everyday world of one rapidly approaching ninety. It is an immensely pleasing read, funny, heart breaking, profound, and mundane. I’ve also been reading the letters…

“If winter comes,Can spring be far behind?” (1)He wondered this morning at the beginning of winter. Don’t worry, I said“If we winter this one out,We can summer anywhere.” (2) Can’t you see that “Winter is on my head,But eternal spring is in my heart.” (3)? “And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land….You will understand…” (4) that “No winter lasts forever;No spring skips its turn.”…