Tag: PoetryPage 1 of 2
In the final days of 2020 I, like many others, was feeling disconnected. Disconnected from my friends, my passions, and even myself. As a part of my research…
As I considered a range of options for my Humanities Moment, I instinctively knew it would come down to music, which is the element that moves me most…
Gwen Harwood’s “Bone Scan” will always have a place in my heart when it comes to my inspiration for teaching Literature and my abiding interest in the humanities….
I have so many fond childhood memories of the Black church in which I grew up. My mother was a founding member of the church, and she was…
I discovered the poetry of William Blake on a bookshelf in San Francisco. Set beside the works of Charles Baudelaire, and other books I’ve long forgotten, Blake’s poems…
Reflecting on growing up as a clumsy child with two rambunctious brothers, two phrases immediately come to mind, burnt into my memory like a brand from their ceaseless…
Griswold recalls how a childhood encounter with a sentimental, “middlebrow” poem about a dog and a veteran (which makes her cry to this day) tapped into wells of…
I could go on and on regarding literature or art that has altered my perspective on life. I was tempted to write about watching beautiful sunsets that show…
Grace Momberger describes how the story of one woman’s ability to make poetry without sound altered the way she perceived the very meaning of communication. – Grace Momberger…
I could do several Humanities Hours out of Humanities Moments – there are so many passages and ideas that have animated my imagination. I first find myself drawn…
During the past several weeks I’ve been drafting some thoughts I’ve had for a number of years regarding the way we learn from nature and from other people’s…
For teenagers, the world they live in is often described as “normal” and everything else is “weird.” One of my goals as a history teacher is to help…
Some years ago, I was asked to give a lecture to students enrolled in a small university’s humanities program describing the personal epiphany I experienced which led to…
Thomas J. Scherer describes two related encounters which speak to the power of hearing poetry performed aloud. The first is an explanatory talk and poetry reading by the…
English teacher Justin Parmenter describes how his encounters with essays by Thoreau and Emerson, and later with the poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” helped…
Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California, reflects on her life growing up in New Mexico and how a low grade on a poetry analysis assignment in…
In the Hanoi Hilton, the place where the North Vietnamese imprisoned and often tortured American captives during the Vietnam War, the US prisoners used a tapping code to…
I started learning Latin in seventh grade because I decided it was the most difficult course I could take, and I had something to prove. I was an…
I remember seeing the images on the television, in newspapers, and in magazines. It was such an epic event. The Berlin Wall was coming down, something I never…
Hearing Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me” at a celebration of her work is the Humanities Moment that offered both comfort and a model for how…