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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Act Two, Door into the Dark, Postscript, Seamus Heaney, The Underground
Dear Seamus Heaney,
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you. ~ From his remarks to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates, May 12, 1996 Dear Seamus Heaney, Six years…
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Dispatch from the Diaspora, Gerald Dawe, Music, Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney, The Troubles, Van Morrison
Belfast & Van Morrison: Works in Progress
A version of this article appeared in the Ulster issue of Reading Ireland. There is no denying Gerald Dawe’s sense of wonder for Van Morrison – and for Belfast – in his lovely book In Another World. Culled from all the material Dawe has published on Morrison since the 1990s, it is a portrait of these artists in and of Belfast, their “otherness” in the city that made them, a city that changed forever when sectarian violence took possession of it in the late 1960s. In his preface to this little volume of essays, Dawe welcomes us in to partake of all on offer in Belfast the early and mid-1960s,…
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a rainy day in phoenix – remembering phil lynott
It wasn’t until I turned fifty that I realized that: a) I would never make enough money to go to a job I hate every day and b) money really isn’t everything although I have often acted as though it is. Much to the chagrin of Suze Orman, I don’t organize it neatly in a wallet, and I honestly couldn’t tell you how much of it is in my checking account at any given time. If I must choose between making a payment for something essential like a house or springing for a hard-bound signed copy of Seamus Heaney’s Nobel speech, “Crediting Poetry,” well, there is no choice which leads me back to…
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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
just walk away – remembering her last first day of school
WALKING AWAY – Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from me towards the school With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free Into a wilderness, the gait of one Who finds no path where the path should be. That hesitant figure, eddying away Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, Has something I never quite grasp to…
