Poetry is to language what a fine brandy is to grape juice. It is refined, distilled, and concentrated. It has strength and potency and at the same time it’s subtle. A poem invites deliberate contemplation and promises to tantalize, awaken, satisfy and warm and, at...

My grandparents never completely let go of the Great Depression. Mistrust of banks, obsessive frugality and a pervasive hyper-vigilance persisted for the rest of their lives-which in my Grandmother’s case extended well into the 1990s.  The Great Depression,...

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an...