Poem of the Week LXXX

In a Cafe

Gary Johnson

When Love is lost, the laughter's good and
gone,
The sun sinks down, the heavy fog rolls in,
Nothing is left to say and you know that no
good
Will ever come of this,
Life will never again be miraculous.
Tall dark woman in the café, I see
How the tears glitter in your blue eyes.
You drink black coffee for bravery
And weep onto the front page of the Times.
I had a love once too who now is gone, is
gone, she's gone. The waves roll along
The coast, the sweet summer rain blows in.
If I knew you, I'd sit by your side and
sing:
This world is not our home, we're only
passing through.

May I have your attention, please?

Hey, hey hey....

THIS is a really interesting blogpost. I was present at the lecture that sparked the post, and I think the whole discussion is one of the most interesting things I have heard about academia in a while. Way to go, +CMC!

What do you get...

...when you combine...

+

?

= One awesome Bible Study.

Poem of the Week LXXIX

From the poetical Helen Hunter:

A Hymn to God the Father

John Donne

WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

SHE'S BACK!!!

Yes, the rumors are true. She's back and better (with a cuter layout) than ever!

ALLISON DIANE SAVRDA-- FOR THE GREATER GLORY.

Poem of the Week LXXVIII

Recommended to me by Amanda:

The Race

Sharon Olds

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you'll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle's eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people's hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.

Myers-Briggs Revisited

I was a freshman in college the first time I took the Myers-Briggs personality test. I don't remember exactly what my results were, but I know I was an E_F_. By the end of college, when I took the test again, I was definitely not an extrovert (anymore?).

I decided it was about time to take it again. Yesterday, apparently, I was an ISFP, and more specifically a:

-moderately expressed Introvert

-moderately expressed Sensing personality

-distinctively expressed Feeling personality

-slightly expressed Perceiving personality

According to the results, I am an Composer Artisan (whatever that means).

Here is one summary that I found particularly interesting:

Contributions to the Organization

• Attend to the needs of people in the organization as they arise

• Act to ensure others' well-being

• Infuse a quiet joy into their work

• Bring people and tasks together by virtue of their cooperative nature

• Pay attention to the humanistic aspects of the organization

Leadership Style

• Prefer a cooperative team approach

• Use personal loyalty as a means of motivating others

• More apt to praise than to criticize

• Rise to the occasion and adapt to what is needed

• Gently persuade by tapping into others' good intentions

Preferred Work Environment

• Contains cooperative people quietly enjoying their work

• Allows for private space

• Has people who are compatible

• Flexible

• Aesthetically appealing

• Includes courteous co-workers

• People-oriented

Potential Pitfalls

• May be too trusting and gullible

• May not critique others when needed, but may be overly self-critical

• May not see beyond the present reality to understand things in their fuller context

• May be too easily hurt and withdraw

Suggestions for Development

• May need to develop more skepticism and a method for analyzing information rather

than just accepting it

• May need to learn how to give negative feedback to others while appreciating their own accomplishments more

• May need to develop a more future-oriented perspective

• May need to be more assertive and direct with others

What do you think?

Poem of the Week LXXVII

After Our Wedding

Yehoshua Nobember

When you forgot the address of our hotel
in your suitcase,
the driver had to pull over
in front of the restaurant.

Men and women dining beneath the August sun
looked up from their salads
to clap for you,
a young, slender woman
in a wedding dress and tiara,
retrieving a slip of paper
from the trunk of a cab
in the middle of the street.

And since that day,
many of the guests at our wedding have divorced
or are gone,
and the restaurant has closed
to become a tattoo parlor.
And we have misplaced and found
many more papers,
but no one was clapping.

And the motion of the lives around us
has been like a great bus
slowly turning onto a crowded street.
And some of the passengers
have fallen asleep in their seats,

while others anxiously search
their jacket pockets
for the notes that might wed
their ordinary lives
to something lofty and astonishing.

Vanderbilt+Catholic

This is an awesome video my terrific teammate Joe made about Vandy+Catholic:

Poem of the Week LXXVI

Ha. ha. ha.

Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too

Jim Hall

All my pwoblems
who knows, maybe evwybody's pwoblems
is due to da fact, due to da awful twuth
dat I am SPIDERMAN.
I know. I know. All da dumb jokes:
No flies on you, ha ha,
and da ones about what do I do wit all
doze extwa legs in bed. Well, dat's funny yeah.
But you twy being
SPIDERMAN for a month or two. Go ahead.

You get doze cwazy calls fwom da
Gubbener askin you to twap some booglar who's
only twying to wip off color T.V. sets.
Now, what do I cawre about T.V. sets?
But I pull on da suit, da stinkin suit,
wit da sucker cups on da fingers,
and get my wopes and wittle bundle of
equipment and den I go flying like cwazy
acwoss da town fwom woof top to woof top.

Till der he is. Some poor dumb color T.V. slob
and I fall on him and we westle a widdle
until I get him all woped. So big deal.

You tink when you SPIDERMAN
der's sometin big going to happen to you.
Well, I tell you what. It don't happen dat way.
Nuttin happens. Gubbener calls, I go.
Bwing him to powice, Gubbener calls again,
like dat over and over.

I tink I twy sometin diffunt. I tink I twy
sometin excitin like wacing cawrs. Sometin to make
my heart beat at a difwent wate.
But den you just can't quit being sometin like
SPIDERMAN.
You SPIDERMAN for life. Fowever. I can't even
buin my suit. It won't buin. It's fwame wesistent.
So maybe dat's youwr pwoblem too, who knows.
Maybe dat's da whole pwoblem wif evwytin.
Nobody can buin der suits, dey all fwame wesistent.
Who knows?