An artist is kneeling with his hands in the earth. Kang Seung Lee has come to Namsan Park in Seoul, and somewhere along the mountain paths and Joseon gardens and 14th-century houses, he is remembering a writer and a filmmaker together.
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April opens with a poem a day
Imagine a poem by Hafiz, the Sufi mystic poet, out loud in a rounded room with tall windows overlooking the mountains. The ridges are a light-imbued silver grey.
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A local woman invents a new kind of poem
This time of year, I met a woman in a stand of laurel bushes. It turns out by the time she was my age, she’d invented a new form of free-verse.
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Pesach: Going out into a changed world (March 24 newsletter)
On a spring morning a few days before Passover, I remembered sharing seders with old friends. Pesach celebrates a time when everything changes, they told me. Everything is new, and you can’t see ahead.
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Passover brings renewal and a call to action
He remembers the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. It was the day in spring when his family would open all the windows and rub down the wood. Family was coming for the holiday.
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Outdoor sculpture recalls Russian artists in spring (March 17 newsletter)
Don Quixote is sitting in a frozen field by a bare rock face, staring into the center of a daisy. I wonder what he dreams at the end of winter …
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Can we stretch out for a moment in the sun? (March 10 newsletter)
The sun is coming out today for an hour or two. Where should we go for a walk? It’s one of those unexpected early spring days that jumps ahead for a flicker, like that afternoon in mud time in the Robert Frost poem …
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Can you feel the sap running today? (March 3 newsletter)
Sweet — That scent in the air like caramel over wood smoke — it feels almost unreal after all this last year, but it’s here. The sap is boiling.
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You can’t hold hands with a computer screen (February 10 newsletter)
It’s a clear winter day, with the sun on the snow the way we haven’t seen it yet all winter, and it’s a holiday week. What does a holiday about union mean in a pandemic, when so many people are isolated?
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Can you feel the gound we’re standing on? (February 3 newsletter)
A friend has been asking me what it means to me to live in the country. She moved here a few years ago from the city, and she’s trying to feel it out. She is thinking about people who have come here in the pandemic.
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