All this snow. Here's a thought from Mae Scanlan: "Too bad there is no mental equal of snow That might cover the mess in our minds, Or those damnable parts that lie deep in our hearts Which we keenly hope nobody finds."

"There is no humiliation so entire as not being quite good enough" — Elizabeth Jane Howard, "The Long View" #SundaySentence

As a Easterner in the Midwest, I miss mountains. "From mountains, the mind and soul of man rises again ... To Wordsworth, mountains were symbols of the "more beyond to which imagination aspires, of the eternity and infinity that are the unattainable goals of the imagination."

Maybe it's time to bring this back. I had to read it cover to cover back in the day. "No one gives what he doesn't have" — Edward P.J. Corbett, quoting an old Latin maxim in discussing the limitations of the ethical appeal.

"If she had purred, the room might have shaken" — Hilary Mantel on novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard #SundaySentence

“The true artist is likely to be furious in the company of cheapness or compromise" — John Gardner A book not without its share of controversy in its day.

Time's winged chariot.

Writers, can jealousy motivate you? This poem in Rattle addresses this. (The answer is yes.)

What a simile!

"'That was to have contained my masterpiece! Isn't it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all here.' And he tapped his forehead ... 'If I could only transpose them into some brain that has the hand, the will.'" -- Henry James, "The Madonna of the Future" #NewYearsResolutions2026

"We hug the world until it stings, We curse it then and sigh for wings" — Ella Wheeler Wilcox #SundaySentence

Seems to sum up Christmas.

"The [Xmas display] window was art, all its sensory charms intact, art constructed of equal parts color and texture, sight and invitation to touch—wonderment, imagination, order, longing, and intense, fondly remembered pleasure. Take away the glass wall, the mystery vanishes." #SundaySentence

Winter Solstice.

"How innocently life ate the days" — John Updike, "Couples"

It's all about the boundaries (personal and otherwise) in Sylvia Plath's poem "Spinster," in which she writes of the order and control of winter — "heart's frost discipline / Exact as a snowflake," as contrasted with spring's "rank wilderness of fern and flower." #metaphors

I am thrilled to see my poem "Stargazer" in the just-released issue of Constellations.

In the excerpt from the Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem below, Norman H. MacKenzie notes that "just as Mary embraced and nurtured Christ, so does the air nestle every hair and snowflake, nourishing even the least significant living creature." Feed your spirit. Don't let You-Know-Who drag you down.

Poet Elinor Wylie reminds us that snow doesn't always mean storms and destruction.

If for no other reason, the use of "pavane" to describe the falling of snowflakes, "half lured to heaven yet."

"Save the gerund and screw the whale" — Tom Stoppard, "The Real Thing" (July 3, 1937 - November 29, 2025) #SundaySentence

Leave it to John Updike to express the after-holiday ennui when the anticipation has dissipated, and reality sets in, "when marriages closed in on themselves like flowers from which the sun is withdrawn."

Here's a beautiful Thanksgiving Day poem by the great Sharon Olds to help you forget that turkey in Mar-a-Lago.

Remember that Trump always had the power to release the Epstein files. He never needed to rely on Congress to do so. So why the machinations? Why all this folderol about Congress releasing them—or not? The answer might be in the files.

"Life is all conjunctions, one damn thing after another, cows and wars and chewing gum and mountains; art—the best, most important art—is all subordination: guilt because of sin because of pain" — John Gardner, "On Moral Fiction" #SundaySentence

John Updike wrote stand-alone poetry in addition to that intertwining his prose. Here is his tribute to a Bendix, the first automatic home washing machine. And I love his use of the word "jugged" meaning imprisoned, with an overtone of a rabbit stewed or boiled in a covered pot.

Such a tribute to the life force. Things move, like Wordsworth's Lucy, "roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees." Sometimes they even breathe.

"There were some things that had to come in time if they were to come at all. If they didn't come in time, they were lost forever ... live all you can; it's a mistake not to." — Henry James, "The Ambassadors"

I wonder how many people at Trump's ostentatious Gatsby party over the weekend had actually read "The Great Gatsby"? I know of at least one who hasn't (upper right corner).

So true.

At long last the month of November, where my book, "Babe in the Woods," is featured in my publisher's calendar.

"When spring comes / we promise to act/ the fool" — from Rita Dove's magnificent "November for Beginners." I used to see Ms. Dove at Arizona State University when she was a creative writing professor and I an adjunct.

Today is John Keats's birthday. As the incomparable Helen Vendler has written in reference to Keats's "Ode to Autumn," "[Therein] the work of creation...is illimitable: there are always more boughs to bless, more honeycombs to fill, more flowers to be brought to bud." #JohnKeats

National Chocolate Day is actually tomorrow, but in these crazy times, let's start celebrating a day early. Here's a poem by Barbara Crooker extolling the wonders of such a divine confection. "Chocolate stays up late and gambles, / likes roulette. Always bets / on the noir."

I'm taking a break from the weekly participation in the best sentence I've read all week and celebrated on Sundays online. Why? I read a lot—and deeply—but sometimes I don't come across a sentence that is both substantive and stylish, which I feel should be the basis for selecting it.

My blog post about the need for the humanities—especially literature—in schools so we aren't a nation of machines. Too many schools use the markets as a touchstone--the results? Lack of critical thinking, no reflection, inability to maintain a democracy. www.judehopkinswriting.net/post/what-do...

In the poem "Binsey Poplars," G.M. Hopkins bemoans the thoughtless cutting down of a row of aspen trees that were beautiful to him. The sentiment is the same in a more-recent event in which something beautiful was heedlessly demolished: "O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew."

Trump was required to get permission from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area, before gutting the East Wing of the White House for the ballroom, NPR said. And, he did not. Because he is king.

Jackson reminds us that "the summer, pale, / Steals back alone for one more song and dance." And those performances are numbered.

Although we are glad to see a possible ending of the Hamas-Israel war to end the killing, perhaps the next peace deal Trump brokers can be the one between the two warring divisions in America that he is largely responsible for.

Just some searing images from T.E. Hulme to keep you believing.

Just heard from my doctor that Medicare is no longer paying for Tele-Health (Zoom) visits. Just the beginning, I fear. Another cruel cut from an administration that cares nothing for patients' health.

I had to give up the role of hoping to inspire others to do things I had had such joy in, i.e., reading wonderful books and even writing one. Most people just want to be left alone, content not to be someone upon whom nothing is lost.

Such images -- all backing up "So much was golden then" and "Schools can be winged things." Imagination needs to be looked after, too.

"By way of imposing meaning upon our disparate American experience, the novelist seeks to create forms in which acts, scenes and characters speak for more than their immediate selves" — Ralph Ellison, Introduction to "Invisible Man" #SundaySentence

These three congressmen told then-president Richard Nixon that he had lost congressional support and would be impeached if he stayed. They used the Constitution as their North Star. Where are such men today? Gutless, spineless traitors to the Constitution. That's where they are.

It's William Faulkner's birthday. He reminds us that America can produce people of genius. Here, a passage from "Absalom, Absalom!" reminds us that sparrows can produce a "cloudy flutter." Think about it.

It's always so worthwhile—and joyful—to revisit Dorothea Krook's insightful analysis of James's "'vessels of consciousness' who are exposed to the impact of living experience and fully cognisant [sic] of the operation and effect of that experience."

"The apples are everywhere; you pick them up from under your feet but to bite into them, for fellowship; you catch their young brightness in the blue air where they suggest strings of strange-colored pearls tangled in the knotted boughs, swarming for a...wasted gaiety” — Henry James #SundaySentence

What a mirthless world this would be if these are the only two TV comics left.