Saying goodbye
“I suck at goodbyes, separations, and transitions. Sometimes, I sneak to bed to avoid saying goodnight to my family. When our oldest daughter, Maggie, headed off to college — a big transition — I...
Between the lines
The poet Richard Michelson writes about life even when reflecting on death. In his new book of poems, “Sleeping as Fast as I Can,” he tells us that “L’Chaim” is a Hebrew toast meaning...
Museum as muse
It is fitting that the stately white clapboard building that is home to the Martha’s VIneyard Museum has a storied history. The U.S. government chose the site overlooking Vineyard Haven Harbor to build a...
Poet’s Corner: ‘Is This You?’
Is This You?
By Roland Goulart
If you feel you're the best
Superior to all
Incapable of error
Too high up to fall
Able to judge others
As you believe they should be
Unable to accept that which you cannot see
If these...
Around the bookstore
According to the Macmillan Dictionary, a beach read is “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged, but not so serious it will spoil your holiday.”
It seems...
A Christmas story for July
Just as summer’s heating up, on July 11, you can meet author Cathryn Newton, whose children’s book, “Home Sweet Island,” takes us through a warm-hearted Vineyard winter’s tale.
Newton opens her story with the barest...
Poet’s Corner: ‘Delft Blue Eyes’
Delft Blue Eyes
By Amaryllis Douglas
I was driving you back to college,
up into the little green mountains
that August evening.
Slants of yellow sunlight
spread across sweet rolls of hay,
a farmer’s perfect field.
Shadows began to stretch long.
You looked...
‘Trial’: Richard North Patterson at his best
Vineyarders browsing through Edgartown Books or the Bunch of Grapes this summer should beware of towering stacks of “Trial” (Post Hill Press), the 23rd novel by seasonal West Tisbury resident Richard North Patterson, which...
Around the Writers Table
Publisher’s Weekly, the trade magazine about the publishing industry, has a weekly column called “Book Deals.” Six books that had recently been acquired for publication were mentioned in this week’s column. Each of the...
Poet’s Corner: ‘Ladies with Horns’
Ladies with Horns
By Fan Ogilvie
She looks at me
They look at me
From the thin hot wire
Around the field
Egyptian goddesses
Horns like the new moons
Of Osiris of Isis
Faces of the long-tombed
Queens of the Nile
No cut-up pieces of...
For writers, from Featherstone
A workshop next week will help guide new and experienced writers through one of the trickier steps in writing a personal essay: writing with honesty about one’s life without blowing up personal relationships.
“Writing the...
Rose Styron: A literary life
A life well lived is the phrase that comes to mind reading Rose Styron’s new book, “Beyond This Harbor: Adventurous Tales of the Heart.” Styron takes us through her very full life with chapters...
A rollicking read
For all who know and love Gwyn McAllister — the person and her work — here on the Island, particularly her many articles for the newspaper you’re now perusing, as well as her celebrity...
Radicals and rascals
Thomas Dresser sets his new book, “Martha’s Vineyard in the Roaring Twenties: Radicals and Rascals,” securely within the larger context of world history. It offers us a sweeping, micro/macro perspective of the decade sitting...
Poet’s Corner: ‘Here’
Here
By Jeffrey Agnoli
Places like the island
are portals
magic wardrobes
platforms 9 and ¾
cracks in the sky
where other dimensions
become unexpectedly
accessible to
accidental
seekers
Here sky and sea shimmer
and secretly invite
the unsettled
the wandering
to self-reveal
to the beloved biosphere
the price is surreal
real portals...
What constitutes truth?
“I’m Henry Farber, the psychiatrist. You will have heard my name, if only lately. The Great Man was found dead in my office in Providence, Rhode Island. That’s my couch he’s draped across in...
Around the Writers’ Table
“How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome.” That’s the cover story of the most recent Harvard Business Review. The picture on the cover is a photograph of those goofy big-nose, bushy-eyebrow Groucho Marx glasses.
As explained in...
Poet’s Corner: ‘amid the alien corn’
amid the alien corn
By Michael Oliveira
i killed Innocence first
as a means of survival
Kindness held its own
in spite of my denial
Compassion feigned ignorance
opting not to hear
there was no end to Mercy
for reasons still unclear
yet Love...
Around the Bookstore: The classics are worth revisiting
In the morning and evening, when I go upstairs to turn on or off the lights at the bookstore, I pass our Classics section, which has probably doubled since I became the book buyer...
Living and loving well
I thought I’d had my fill of reading inspirational self-help books in the 1980s, and hadn’t done so until picking up “Live, Learn, Love Well: Lessons from a Life of Progress Not Perfection” by...