David Radavich's Blog
RSS
Feb.05.2013
My favorite love story was first broadcast some years ago on National Public Radio. Early on a weekday morning, a young professional woman from New York boarded a commuter flight to an important meeting in Washington, D.C. One row behind her across the aisle sat a handsome man of about her age to...
Continue Reading »
Dec.15.2012
Given yet another gun massacre, I feel compelled to reprise the poem I wrote after the slaughter in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year.
AURORA CORPOREALIS
We need to grieve a while.
For everything we are
and have been,
dark reality
of our fantasies
that all too...
Continue Reading »
Oct.29.2012
PARIS POSTCARD
How to explain the quotidian?
The richness of the not extraordinary
self being in the world.
Every day extra croissants
with coffee, newspapers in two tongues,
an attic room with dark-chocolate
beams at the city’s forehead
looking out
on spires,...
Continue Reading »
Sep.10.2012
During this campaign season, I hope all of us will take some individual responsibility, some time away from our routines of work, shopping, and leisure, to engage with the larger rhythms of our challenged democracy. The needs are great, and the planet depends on us.
CANVASSING...
Continue Reading »
May.08.2012
Over the years I have written a handful of rhymed poems—more than a handful, it turns out—sonnets, villanelles, quatrains, plus a whole cadre of poems with their own idiosyncratic stanzaic structures that nonetheless rely fundamentally on rhyme at the end of the line. For some reason I have...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Oct.24.2011
THE GHOSTS ARE US
The ghosts everyone
talks about
everyone fears in sleep
or hears mounting the stairs
haunting the house
and children
the ghosts
are really ourselves
semi-alive
in our daily routines
driving to work
computing
stirring our...
Continue Reading »
Sep.08.2011
Italy is a gorgeous, maddening, magical country. For gorgeous, think Renaissance paintings or contemporary fashion. For maddening, think mounding trash piles in Naples or Sicilian Mafia killings—or simply Silvio Berlusconi.
And yet. The magic always remains and returns. ...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Jul.07.2011
We are fortunate to live in a county that has enshrined the notion of free speech both in our founding document and in our national consciousness. It is an often troublesome notion, particularly to those who would seek to control the thought and speech of others. But the import of the right to...
Continue Reading »
Jun.08.2011
SHAKESPEARE ENVY
When I presume I’ve done my deeds so well,
I look upon your willowed words and tell
myself there’s really no more point in hoping—
I might just as well be sitting here alone,
that’s the hard truth, toasting shadows, moping
for glory in this world before I...
Continue Reading »
Mar.10.2011
The female who had the greatest impact on my life, without doubt, was my mother, a nuclear mathematician employed by the Atomic Energy Commission in Idaho Falls, Idaho. A single mother with two young children to raise after her husband left for another woman, she taught me two stringent lessons...
Continue Reading »
Nov.11.2010
It is a mistake to imagine expression is ever free. There is always a price. The question is who pays, and when, and why.
Am I free to express the wind? Of course—if I can. But most expression is of a decidedly mundane sort that carries hidden penalties. Often we distort truth to make those around...
Continue Reading »
Sep.01.2010
I always feel contentedly wistful at the end of summer. Thank God the heat is abating; reaping is close at hand. And yet . . . like the proverbial cricket, I feel time for singing reaching its last notes before we crawl inward and hope to survive.
Now we turn back to work in earnest. ...
Continue Reading »
About David
David Radavich was born in Boston but has lived in many parts of the country as well as in Canada, Germany, and Scotland. His poetry collections include Slain Species (Court Poetry, London, 1980), By the Way: Poems over the Years (Buttonwood, 1998), and...
Connections
Causes David Radavich Supports
Human rights world-wide, ecology/conservation, historic preservation