Original Poetry from Dietrich Balsbaugh
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“An Answer to my Brother’s Phone Calls from Manhattan”
Original Poetry from Geoffrey Ayers
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“In Gratitude to the Bees”
Original Poetry from Kate Champagne
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“Sleep Unto Death”
Original Poetry from David Ehrenman
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The Trip to Fallsburg
“Fallsburg. Calling at Fallsburg,” the announcer said as the train hissed to a standstill. I hadn’t planned to leave the city during my trip, but after elbowing through the swarm upon swarm of tourists, even a day’s escape sounded like heaven. Every town has a list of unmissable sights; however, I found delightfully little written about Fallsburg. When one of the few reviews mentioned what sounded like missing the open arms of a tourist trap, I bought my ticket.
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When I Feel Small
Maybe, though, just maybe, it’s ok to face the fear as a small Whitefoot mouse does. “The little life she had, she loved dearly, and so far she had taken excellent care of it.”
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The Film is the Holy Fool: A Conversation with Filmmaker Josh David Jordan
When we try new things, sometimes we feel like a fool. But if we are not willing to be a fool, then we will never know how to start a new thing, or how to make it better. — Fr. John
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The Courage to Let Things Be
And that’s where the heart of the matter lies—not just in how we read a story, but in how we engage the world itself. Do we approach the world to live with it—or to take it apart in order to dominate it?
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Basho on Poetry and Life III
Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one – when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. However well-phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural – if the object and yourself are separate – then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.
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Basho on Poetry and Life II
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn.
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Basho on Poetry and Life I
What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and, returning to the world of our daily experience, to seek therein the truth of beauty.
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Hazlitt on the Ignorance of the Learned
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are often less made use of as "spectacles" to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.
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Seneca on the Requirement of Usefulness
What is required, you see, of any man is that he should be of use to other men—if possible, to many; failing that, to a few; failing that, to those nearest him; failing that, to himself.
