Contrary to all appearances, I have not given up my 100 Themes Challenge, even though I started it in 2015 and I’m not even halfway through. I WILL GET THERE EVENTUALLY. Tonight (December 2 going into December 3), I wrote a poem for the first time in months. And the poem before that had been the … Read more…
It’s been a while since the last Turgenev translation, but we’re back in business! “The Threshold” was one of the first prose poems in the Senilia collection that I read and understood, so it has a special place in my heart alongside “The Skulls.” You’ll notice that this one has no commentary attached. That’s because … Read more…
I resurrected the 100 Themes challenge this past year, and for the most part I’ve been sitting on the new poems instead of sharing them. They just didn’t seem “good enough” to be shared. While sifting through the collection today, however, I noticed one that I rather liked. It was based on the 28th prompt: … Read more…
Now that it’s November, the Western Hemisphere is witnessing the apparent death of nature — and in the Catholic Church, we are also observing a month of prayer for the dead. So it seemed apt to choose, as my next prose poem translation, Turgenev’s “Старик” (“The Old Man”), a reflection on aging and eventual death. … Read more…
I haven’t had a Thoughts & Ravings post in a while, but tonight I have a soapbox to get out. Years ago I wrote a post musing whether Christians could write or enjoy horror. I’ve since taken it down because it no longer reflected the theme or tone of my blog, but the short answer … Read more…