Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory.

The blog is also a way to continue to register what I see and hear in a day - no matter what the form. In fact, my blog is a complete mixture of forms.

One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.

As for what you're calling hard luck - well, we made New England out of it. That and codfish.

You can take off your hats now, gentlemen, and I think perhaps you'd better.

Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.

When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.