Here are eight poems I wrote between 1974 and 1981. Unlike the poems in the two part-series I published a couple of weeks ago, which had never seen the light of day, I shared these with friends and others, and I revised them from time to time. They
People in my life
A Lexicon of Character Formation
Mimicry is one of the many skills I don’t possess. Even so, the people I’ve known over the course of my life have made their mark on me, and I hear it in the expressions I’ve co-opted from them. I’ll always recall from my childhood with affection
Young at Heart
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” That’s the Lord Henry Wotton character speaking in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. I think of my father who, as he approached ninety, insisted he felt no different
Magic Moment
One serene early spring evening, I was walking with my white cane on a path through the Amherst College campus when I encountered the author, Robert Stone. I was taking a course of his, albeit not for credit and I’d never spoken a word in class. It
Party Quandaries
To his surprise, my friend Neil was recently invited to a former neighbor's housewarming party at her new home. Neil's vision, never great, has deteriorated in recent years. He took a taxi there and was greeted at the door by the host, his former
September 11 and the Hazards of Writing About a Friend
A recent experience has caused me to consider yet again the difficulties inherent in writing about someone else, above all a friend. An essay I worked on for two weeks caused such distress to a good friend that I abandoned the project before