Even the Sun directs our gaze away from
itself and to the life illumined by it.
─ Eberhard Arnold
The Sun himself is weak when he first rises and
gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.
─ Charles Dickens
The day of the Sun is like the day of a king.
It is a promenade in the morning,
a sitting on the throne at noon,
a pageant in the evening.
─ Wallace Stevens
Lars Gustafsson(1936 –2016) was born in Västerås, Sweden on May 17. A Swedish poet, novelist, and scholar, he published his first novel in 1959, and his first poetry collection the following year. Some of his poetry collections have been published in the U.S, including: The Stillness of the World Before Bach (New Directions, 1988), Elegies and Other Poems (New Directions, 2000), and A Time in Xanadu (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). Gustafsson was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 until 2006, when he retired and returned to Sweden.
To read the Lars Gustafsson poem “Elegy for a Dead Labrador” click:
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
– Vivian Greene“I have always considered the rain to be healing – a blanket – the comfort of a friend.”
– Douglas Coupland“Give thanks for the rain in your life which waters the flowers of your soul.”
– Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To read Irene’s new poem “After the Rain” click
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“A swan looking at the world from a misty calm lake is like a creature looking at the world from space! All he sees is a large herd of people governed by the most stupid and most inadequate people.”
– Mehmet Murat Ildan, contemporary Turkish playwright, novelist and thinker
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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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April 29, 1982 – International Dance Day was launched by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute (ITI).
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American’s best-known woman poet and one of the nation’s greatest and most original authors, lived the life of a recluse in Amherst Massachusetts. She wrote nearly 1800 poems, ignoring the traditional poetic forms prevailing among most of the other poets of her day. The extent of her work wasn’t known until after her death, when her younger sister Lavinia discovered her cache of poems.
To read Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Cannot Dance Upon My Toes” click:
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Carol Ann Duffy (1955 –) — Scottish poet and playwright, became the first woman, first Scot, and first openly LGBT person appointed as Britain’s Poet Laureate (2009-2019). Her 1985 poetry collection, Standing Female Nude, won the first of her three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards. Mean Time (1993) won the Whitbread Poetry Prize. She also won the 1995 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and many other honors. In Duffy’s The World’s Wife, she gives us a collection of modern versions of the old tales, with an unsettling feminist twist.
To read Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Tea” click:
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Flowers For Socrates 