Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending I read Barnes's short novel in almost one sitting, not because it's a particularly compell...

Lately I've read two novels by distinguished contemporary writers that left me wondering if it's possible to be too clever for a nov...

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth The narrator of McEwan's latest novel is a young woman (in my mind's eye she's played by Romola Gara...

The Passage by Justin Cronin My rating: 3 of 5 stars I don't read a lot of bestsellers anymore. I had to, when I was a book secti...

The following review ran, a little shortened for space, in today's San Francisco Chronicle : CONTESTED WILL: Who Wrote Shakespeare? B...

A Study in Aesthetics  The very small children in patched clothing, Being smitten with an unusual wisdom, Stopped in their play as she pa...

Snow   The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was  Spawning snow and pink roses against it  Soundlessly collateral and incompa...

I Knew a Woman   I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,  When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;  Ah, when she moved, she mo...

Poem   As the cat climbed over the top of  the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the ...

Musée des Beaux Arts About suffering they were never wrong,  The Old Masters: how well they understood  Its human position; how it takes pl...

The Idea of Order at Key West She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, flut...

Missing Dates Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste rema...

Waterfalls Always in that valley in Wales I hear the noise       Of waters falling.                                There is a clump of tree...

Spring Pools   These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, ...

what would I do without this world faceless incurious  where to be lasts but an instant where every instant  spills in the void the ignoranc...

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes -- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding ...

Proust's Madeleine   Somebody has given my Baby daughter a box of Old poker chips to play with. Today she hands me one while I am s...

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine  There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy brea...

The War Against the Trees The man who sold his lawn to standard oil Joked with his neighbors come to watch the show While the bulldozers,...

Among School Children  1 I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to c...