The Saunterer

Elizabeth Bishop’s first steps to her lifelong love of words

    Sesame Street is effective at teaching children the alphabet and words? Oh, thank you Elizabeth Bishop, for you instead learned the old-fashioned way, reminding us there is the old-fashioned and better way of learning all things:

I was five. My grandmother had already taught me to write on a slate my name and my family’s names and the names of the dog and the two cats. Earlier she had taught me my letters, and at first I could not get past the letter g, which for some time I felt was far enough to go. My alphabet made a satisfying short song, and I didn’t want to spoil it. Then a visitor called on my grandmother and asked me if I knew my letters. I said I did and, accenting the rhythm, gave him my version. He teased me so about stopping at g that I was finally convinced one must go on with the other nineteen letters. Once past g, it was plain sailing.  By the time school started, I could read almost all my primer, printed in both handwriting and type, and I loved every word.

    (Quoted from page 4 of Elizabeth Bishop: The Collected Prose. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984)
    For a brief biography of Elizabeth Bishop, click here. For images of or relating to Elizabeth Bishop, click here.

Theresa Brown on how not to let death get you down

    As a nurse, Theresa Brown sees people dying every day. How not to let death get you down? Her answer is in this passage:

[In Theresa Brown’s] very first New York Times essay, she wrote that, during work at the hospital, she often hears the words of the poet John Donne in her head: “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” But, she also admitted that sometimes she finds those words “empty,” because death can be unsettling, even for those who see it every day. So she wrote: “What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the only antidote to death is not poetry, or drama, or miracle drugs, or a roomful of technical expertise and good intentions. The antidote to death is life.”

    (Quoted from page 23 of “Choice Moments,” by Ervin Dyer. Pitt Magazine, Summer, 2010)
    For a brief biography of Theresa Brown, click here. For information about Ervin Dyer, click here.

Mahatma Gandhi on the harm of retaliating

    As Mahatma Gandhi put it:

    An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.

    (Quoted from page 50 of An Unsolicited Gift: Why We Do What We Do, by Dennis Friedman. Arcadia Books, 2010)
    For a brief biography of Mahatma Gandhi, click here. For images of or relating to Mahatma Gandhi, click here. To learn about psychiatrist Dr. Dennis Friedman and his ideas, click here.