To live in the mercy of God. Awe, not comfort…. And awe suddenly passing beyond itself. Becomes a form of comfort. —Denise Levertov Two weeks ago I flew to my childhood home in Tennessee, and twenty-nine hours after I arrived my grandmother died. Then a week after that I returned to my adult home in Philadelphia and a hurricane hit. My grandmother’s name was Gennie Vee. The hurricane’s name was Sandy. They are both gone now. I’m not accustomed to... Read more
Most years when the Marine Corps birthday comes around, followed immediately by Veterans Day, I reflect on my service. This year I’m not thinking about my time in the Corps, but musing on why I joined in the first place. Anyone who knows me will readily tell you I’m not temperamentally cut out for military life. I’m also thinking about my boys. My oldest son Evan is sixteen, just two years from the age I was when I enlisted. His... Read more
Near the end of Kenneth Lonergan’s film, Margaret, a seventeen-year-old girl sits next to her mother in a theater, watching a duet from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. The voices of two opera singers climb toward each other from opposite sides of the stage—rising in their plaints like two vines, hoping to unite in an arch above. The girl’s attention is rapt, her face straining at the union aspired for. But then the singers fall back, collapsing in a cascade of... Read more
Guest Post By Stuart Scadron-Wattles Continued from yesterday. At one time during our church life in Kitchener, Ontario, my wife Linda and I were asked to be sponsors of the junior high group in our church. As part of that responsibility, Linda co-led a trip to into Toronto, an hour away, to spend some time with young kids who were living on the street and the people who helped them cope. The guide for part of that experience had been... Read more
Guest Post By Stuart Scadron-Wattles I recently gave a guest lecture for a graduate class on global development. I was told that I could do pretty much what I liked, and because it was a Christian college, I felt free to have them meditate on a particular scene from the New Testament, one that appears almost verbatim in three of the gospels. The account I chose was from chapter 12 of the book of John. The scene begins with... Read more
Last Tuesday, after it became clear that Superstorm Sandy was going to bypass Washington, D.C., in favor of New York, I decided to stain the discolored grout in the bathroom. It appeared that we had a few more hours to stay inside with our batteries and massive food stores—the rains were still torrential, the children were snuggled up under blankets watching a movie, my husband was practicing guitar—so I pulled out the blue painter’s tape and the bottle of Grout... Read more
Yesterday, in Part One of my review of the major new biography, Denise Levertov: A Poet’s Life, by Dana Greene, I focused on Greene’s information and insights into Levertov’s life. Today I turn to the other term of the book’s sub-title: the poet. Since Greene is writing a biography, not a work of literary criticism, her interest is in how Levertov’s extraordinary body of poetry both shaped and was shaped by her life experience. Indeed, Levertov’s life and art were unusually... Read more
I thought I knew Denise Levertov. In the 1970s, she and my husband were both part of the English department faculty at Tufts University. He was writing about the Beat poets, whom Denise had known well, and she graciously came to our house for my husband to interview. I used to walk by her house, in our neighborhood, and admire the brilliant flowers in her English garden. Yes, I thought I knew Denise Levertov. I’ve read most of her poetry... Read more
I am boarding a plane to Detroit, and so is she, her thick coat falling onto my lap from the center aisle, the smell of smoke thick enough to make my head swim. She shoves it under her seat, her thick gray hair brushing my arm as she sits. “I’m Dianne,” she tells me, wiping the hair from her eyes. “Boy, am I not looking forward to this flight.” I agree with her, my voice surprisingly loud. Maybe it’s the... Read more
Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old he will not depart from it. —Proverbs 22:6 During our first year of marriage, Becki and I babysat to prepare ourselves for the perils of parenthood. Nothing could have prepared us, however, for teaching someone else’s children the meaning of the word “turd.” When we chose to screen Richard Donner’s 1985 film, Goonies, for ten-year-old Emily and her six-year-old brother, Trevor, we thought we were... Read more
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