All things birth-day, thinking of Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me, A Parent’s Thoughts (coming soon to a neighborhood near you), and tomorrow, the first day of school, a new year, a new life: WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR OUR WORLD, WHAT WOULD YOUR LETTER BE? WHAT WOULD YOU TEACH, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE BE LEARNED? And so, launched by thoughts of T.S. Eliot’s birthday, beginnings . . . beginnings . . .
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Dante, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Rumi, Shakespeare, e.e. cummings, Thoreau, Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness, and Terry Eagleton’s The Meaning of Life, to the music of Simon and Garfunkle, Stevie Nicks, Aaron Hall, Jacques Brel, musicals Carousel, Mondo Cane, and My Fair Lady, Beatles:

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Have fun my dear, my dear, have fun–Hafiz

I have conversed with the spiritual Sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill—William Blake

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You’ve seen the headlines–Let’s start, O Poetry Flight of Listeners, with a way to begin the morning anew, morning being whenever you are awake, and now is a good time—from Psalms, This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice, and be glad in it, Psalms 118, I’m Professor Barbara Mossberg for our Poetry Slow Down on radiomonterey.com, with Producer Zappa Johns, who does our podcast, at barbaramossberg.com, with the news we need, the news we heed, the news without which men die miserably every day 

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WHEN IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR LIFE WE FIND OURSELVES IN A DARK WOOD WHERE THE DIRECT WAY IS LOST—HOW “WILD, HARSH AND INPENETRABLE”—“SCARCELY LESS BITTER THAN DEATH”—“THINKING OF IT RECREATES THE FEAR”—(Dante, The Inferno), HOW AND WHY TO GO ON:
When Fear Blocks Our Way Love is the Answer

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