I wanted to read a poem that had recently moved me. I had been trying to read it every night, as a prelude to dinner or a coda to dinner, but things kept getting in the way. The mood, for instance. It wasn’t a very poem-y poem, but it was a poem, and I guess it had that against it. Still, it was funny and affecting, and I saw it as a moral Trojan h... See more

The question I’m really asking, I realize now, is how to be human. When I write, or read, or paint, I am more of a human than I am a gadget. The words you are reading I first put down in longhand using a sharpened pencil. While I was writing, I did not check my email. At such moments, I feel I’m myself rather than a body attached to a buzzing phone... See more