DAILY PHOTO: Wat Choum Khong Sourin Tharame [ວັດຊໍ່ຂົງສຸລະທະທາລາ]
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DAILY PHOTO: Wat Don Mueang
DAILY PHOTO: Sri Renuka Parameshwari & Sri Kalabhairavar Temple, Bangalore
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“Ebb” by Edna St. Vincent Millay [w/ Audio]
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
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BOOKS: “The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar by Paul Laurence DunbarMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Available online at Project Gutenberg
As the title suggests, this is all the published poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. With a career pre-dating the Harlem Renaissance, during which lyric poetry ruled the roost, Dunbar may not be as well-known today as several of the African American poets who came later, but it’s not for being any less masterful.
The collection includes a wide variety of lyric forms from simple quatrains to intermediate length poems of several pages. The content and tones also vary, and there is often a sense of whimsy in the poems that goes beyond just being lyrical in form. Dunbar wrote both in dialect and in standard English. He was a big fan of James Whitcomb Riley’s dialectal work, as a poem in Riley’s honor attests. The dialect poems are easy enough to follow and are a pleasure to read. Dunbar was by no means limited to dialectal writing; he also wrote in Standard English cleverly, and the juxtaposition of his very “proper” poems and the dialectal ones shows a great range.
I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers, particularly those who enjoy lyric and dialectal poems.
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DAILY PHOTO: Skaters in Monochrome
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Piano Mind [Haiku]
snow has fallen.
cars of many colors, all white:
a piano-esque lot.
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“Without desire everything is sufficient” by Ryōkan Taigu
Without desire everything is sufficient.
With seeking myriad things are impoverished.
Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.
A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body.
Alone I hike with a deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Daniel Leighton in Essential Zen (1994) HarperSanFrancisco.
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PROMPT: First Day
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.
I can’t say I have strong recollections of any of them. I have a vague recollection of the flight to basic training (first time flying, but mostly I remember there was a drunk dude sitting next to me,) but I don’t recall anything from my first day in the military proper. No first days of school or on any job have stuck.
I guess my clearest memory is for the most recent major first — first day living in Bangalore, India (a little over eleven years ago.) I must say, however, I just remember snippets of being lost in a walk around the neighborhood. One might expect a first day in urban India to be daunting / overwhelming- even for a reasonably well-traveled Westerner, but if it was I don’t remember that bit.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 