Anecdotal Evidence

My father by trade was an ironworker and on the side he ran a welding business. The garage was his workshop. There he kept the usual oxy-ace...

I used to think that everyone knew it -- “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” -- the same way everyone knew “And what is so rare as ...

“With all his gifts, he had of imagination not one spark. Fancy and wit he had in his earlier work; and grace he never lost; but for the res...

Yet again, an English word surprises me with its multiple meanings. A reader complimented the “scruples” I apply to writing. I thought I kne...

R.L. Barth has sent me a copy of his first book, Forced-Marching to the Styx: Vietnam War Poems , a chapbook of twenty-one poems published b...

Much of my working life was spent among writers indifferent to the precision, clarity and stylishness of what they wrote. They flung words o...

An old friend, just months older than me, is taking longevity hard. We’re not that old – he just turned seventy-four, I’m still seventy-thr...