by Richard Wilbur Now winter downs the dying of the year, And night is all a settlement of snow; From the soft street the rooms of houses show A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere, Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin And still allows some stirring down within. I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell And held in ice as dancers in a...
There’s nothing quite as tempting and delicious at a cocktail party as a handful of mixed nuts that have been roasted and spiced, though it’s unlikely you’ll be able stop at just one handful. My sister-in-law Beverly, a first-class cook and the embodiment of Southern hospitality, seems to travel with a tin of these nuts — freshly roasted and redolent of spices— wherever she goes. Luckily for us...
for Ros Krauss Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able...
There’s nothing quite as pallid and depressing-looking as a Thanksgiving dinner store-bought pumpkin pie. And it tastes about as good as it looks. With its machine-stamped crust and thick, gummy filling it usually sits untouched on the sideboard among the crumbs of other desserts, the November equivalent of December’s fruit cake. A first-rate pumpkin pie has a crisp, buttery crust, and is filled...
Certain places have a way of staying with us, imprinting their unique shapes and spirits on our memories forever. The gardens at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. are one of those places for me. The grounds at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts are another. These two edenic settings have given me hours of pleasure during my visits and, after studying how they were conceived...
I was surprised to learn that Laugharne, Wales is happily celebrating Dylan Thomas’s centenary this month. A small fishing village on Carmarthen Bay, Laugharne is just down the coast from the town of Carmarthen where I spent a semester abroad studying with the poet and Welsh language advocate Raymond Garlick. Though this was about twenty years after Thomas’s death in 1953, most of the locals I...