Black & white headshot of the poet

Louise Glück by Katherine Wolkoff

"Very few writers share her talent for turning water into blood."
- Adam Plunkett

23rd April is the feast of St George. Here is the Garter King wearing a tabard with the royal arms and crown, kneeling before St George

BL Stowe 594; 'William Bruges's Garter Book'); c. 1430- c. 1440 (before 1450); England, S. E. (probably London); f.5v @blmedieval.bsky.social

23rd April is St George's day. St George is depicted here slaying the dragon.

BL Harley 2900, f.55r @blmedieval.bsky.social

The poppy was sacred to Hypnos, god of sleep, a symbol of consolation and oblivion.

“Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul”

Endymion / John Keats
#WyrdWednesday

Champ de blé et coquelicots, Kees van Dongen 1905

Champ de blé et coquelicots, Kees van Dongen 1905

White-throated sparrow 🪶

Happy birthday to the Bard!

There's no better guide to the sonnets of William Shakespeare than Helen Vendler.

This Poetry Month, save 30% on your copy of The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets with the code POE30: tinyurl.com/yc8nzsw3

Mountainous landscape

Arcadia, a mountainous region in the Peloponnese, was a difficult land to farm, so its inhabitants relied on pasturing flocks and hunting, both presided over by the god Pan. Other Greeks regarded the Arcadians as ‘older than the moon.’ #WyrdWednesday

📷 Wikipedia

Painted study of red peonies on white background.

Peonies, study, Martin Schongauer, 1472.

Charlotte Brontë - BOTD

“All of me knelt down. All of me bowed. Inside the chapel of myself, all of my candles lit.”

~ Niall Williams, ‘This is Happiness.’

#Painting by Jasmine Diez.

“I was happy when I walked the streets of Paris by myself.” On Wednesday, 18 February, 2026, Another Look will present Nobel prizewinning Patrick Modiano’s 2007 novella, In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books). The event will take place, as always, at 7 p.m. at Levinthal Hall, 424 Santa Teresa Street on the Stanford campus. Panelists will include Stanford Prof. Robert Pogue Harrison, author, director of Another Look, host […]

Feed: "The Book Haven"
By: Cynthia Haven on Sunday, February 1, 2026

Christ with disciples on the road to Emmaus; pen and brush in brown ink, washed, on paper, circa 1665, Warsaw University Library.

Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, with daffodils in the forefront

The Fisher Center, in bloom. 🌼 Spring is here, and we look forward to welcoming you.

📸: Carmine Covelli

"My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you."

(Vladimir Nabokov writing to his wife Véra)

A monk kneeling before the Virgin and Child under the portal of the abbey church of Cluny

BnF MS Latin 17716; Miscellanea secundum usum ordinis Cluniacensis; 12th century (end)-13th century (beginning) (after 1189); France (Saint-Pierre de Cluny); f.23r @gallicabnf.bsky.social

The trees are greening

💙💚

Our Lady of the Garden All this time, I felt like I had to describe / the things I did, and what was done to me,

what I really need
to say is that it rained all night and morning,
and the drops were a percussion on the trees,
and after the sun rose, I saw an insect land on the railing
and take shelter, and a bird drank from a leaf.
--Pádraig Ó Tuama, from “Our Lady of the Garden”

shorturl.at/OVyeh

#poetry

The painter, in a suit, smiles as he feed the hornbill. It's unfortunate that this is in black & white, considering what Morris said about Miro's colour.

Joan Miro feeds a hornbill at the London Zoo in this 1964 Lee Miller shot, for a book by Desmond Morris

"I had chosen this bird because the bright colouring around its eye could have been painted by Miro’s hand. Lee Miller took a splendid photograph of him feeding the hornbill."
- DM

"Paris under the Ancien Régime was not as socially fluid as London, but it was not as rigidly stratified, at least for artists and the intelligentsia, as is sometimes suggested." Fascinating essay. Recommended. (Full disclosure: I have a serious transtemporal crush on Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.)

Review: Christopher Beha’s journey of belief Christopher Beha's 'Why I Am Not an Atheist' recounts decades of seeking through reading, trying to find the shape of a meaningful, sustainable worldview without God.

'If you weren’t paying attention in college, this book is a liberal arts education pressed between two covers.'
Excellent, erudite review of Christopher Beha's rich, philosophic pilgrimage, Why I Am Not an Atheist by Augustine scholar James K. A. Smith: shorturl.at/LnAvU

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
~ Anaïs Nin

The Blue Door (1927)
🎨 Raymond Wintz

Moonlight and Birches (1915)
by Tom Thomson

VIENNA IN SPRING Wisteria at Schönbrunn One of the first clusters of flowers in full bloom along the wisteria archway Hietzing, 13th District

VIENNA IN SPRING
Wisteria at Schönbrunn
One of the first clusters of flowers
in full bloom along the wisteria archway
Hietzing, 13th District
17 April 2026 © Merisi Vienna
#EastCoastKin #ECK #Photography
#PhotographersOfBlueSky
#Bloomscrolling #Wisteria

Joy Davidman (with C.S. Lewis) - BOTD

Langston Hughes. Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes, edited by Ricardo Wilson II

Troubled Lands is a landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers, edited by Ricardo Wilson II.

Out now (19 May UK pub).

Read a free preview here: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Red-bellied woodpecker & house sparrow 🪶

Some of the best writing I am reading regularly is in Opera Magazine. Really. It is a treat every month.