Month: November 2017

Two quotes

Posted on by Meryl in Philosophical

In case you didn’t happen to use Google today, they are honoring Gertrude Jekyll, famous British gardener of the late 19th, early 20th century.  She is very quotable; here’s an example:

‘There is a lovable quality about the actual tools. One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain. Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless. ”

On a less earthy path to enlightenment, I have been reading Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish religious leader born in Germany, who famously met and marched with Martin Luther King. This quote seems particularly apposite today: Continue reading “Two quotes” →

Rainy Monday

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Rain seems so appropriate at the end of a holiday weekend, but this Monday poem is not about rain, but a selection from a new anthology I just finished reviewing for ZYZZYVA, In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems Far and Wide, published jointly by McSweeney’s and Poetry International. The review will appear soon on their blog. In the meantime, here is the title poem:

In the shape of a human body I am visiting the earth

In the shape of a human body
I am visiting the earth;
the trees visit
in the shapes of trees.
Standing between the onions
and the dandelions
near the ailanthus and the bus stop,
I don’t live more thoroughly
inside the mucilage of my own skull
than outside of it
and not more behind my eyes
than in what I can see with them. Continue reading “Rainy Monday” →

Your morning economics lesson

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

This morning, Larry was reading Greg Mankiw’s NY Times editorial on 45’s tax plan. Mankiw is an economics professor at Harvard.  To familiarize me with Mankiw, Larry played a country western economics song, Dual Mandate for me. I guess he was directed to this from reading Mankiw, and I incorrectly reported it as Greg. An alert reader (thanks, Dan) caught the error, but the video is still worth watching.

And Mankiw’s editorial in the Times is worth reading.

I don’t know any good poems on economics or business. As Dana Gioia has pointed out, business is the last taboo subject for poetry. I have one poem about money, and so you don’t miss a Monday poem, here it is.

Meditation on Money

I am thinking about a day forty years ago
when we were down to our last fifty cents,
and our friends drove up
with a month’s rent and groceries,
and after we ate and talked, we sat together
on the edge of the dock, saying nothing,
and watched the barnacles
slowly open their feathery lips,
slowly close them.

Meryl Natchez

Of Jazz and Poetry

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

We are back home, and happy to find that David Juda has completed a wonderful project of posting poems and music from For Jazz on his website, Voetica.

Just click on an artist to see and listen. This area of the site features woodcuts by Nina Mera, poetry by Peter McSloy, and accompanying music by jazz greats.

This site is a terrific resource to hear many recordings of contemporary and significant poems from the past.  With a background in theater, David has found extraordinary talent and there are new additions all the time. Worth going back to many times.