October 6, 2024 6:27 am

Meeting Bench

PURITY – Novel, by Jonathan Franzen

He was born in Illinois, and is an American novelist and essayist. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1981 and studied thereafter at the Freie Universität in Berlin on a Fulbright scholarship. His debut novel was The Twenty-seventh City. His second novel was Strong Motion. Winner of the National Book Award for The Corrections (2001), Jonathan Franzen‘s recent novels have …

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WHEN THE MUSIC BECOME POETRY – Take me home, Country Road / John Denver

TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROAD > Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze. Country roads, take me home to the place I belong. West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads. All my memories gather round her, miner’s lady, stranger to …

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TO BE NOBODY – Poetry, by Edward Estlin Cummings

Love poems and descriptive nature poems, would always be his favoured forms. Edward Estlin Cummings (1894/1962), he was born in Massachusetts, to indulgent parents who encouraged him to develop his creative gifts. In 1917 he volunteered to serve in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance group in France. At the end of the First World War, he went to Paris to study art. …

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DASHING OF CHARCOAL PORTRAIT SKETCHES – John Singer Sargent inside Edwardian era luxury

JOHN SINGER SARGENT 1/3 – American origins, but Italian election, John Singer Sargent remained throughout his life tied to Italy, where he returned often and always symbolized for him a source of inspiration for his pictorial fantasies. In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, Sargent practiced his own form of Realism. To …

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JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856/1925), AMERICAN PAINTER – The leading portrait painter of his generation

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FOR HIM I SING – Poetry, by Walt Whitman

On the West Hills of Long Island (New York), he was born 1819, on May day. His father was a carpenter and his mother barely literate that gave him unconditional love. At the age of eleven Walt Whitman was withdrawn from public school, to help support his family. At the age of twelve he fell in love with the written …

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ANOTHER SKY – Emily Elizabeth Dickinson: the brighter garden, where not a frost has been

As a result of life of solitude, she was able to focus on her world more sharply than other authors of her time. She (the second daughter of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson), was born on December 10, 1830 in Massachusetts, into the quiet community of Amherst. Emily and her sisters nurtured in a quiet family, when always her mother …

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INTO MY OWN – Poetry, by Robert Frost

He wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. Although his verse forms are traditional, he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter. Robert Frost, born San Francisco (Mar. 26, 1874), and dead Boston (Jan. 29, 1963). At the age of 38, he sold the farm moving with his family to England, where he could devote himself …

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WHEN THE MUSIC BECOME POETRY – One Dance, by Drake

ONE DANCE – Baby I like your style. Grips on your waist front way, back way.You know that I don’t play streets not safe, but I never run away, even when I’m away. Oti, oti, there’s never much love when we go. I pray to make it back in one piece. I pray, I pray. That’s why I need a …

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THE GRAPES OF WRATH – Novel, by John Steinbeck

He was an American author of many books (including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collctions of short stories). His works always explored the themes of fate and injustice. Before achieving success as a writer, he dropped out of college, working as a manual laborer. In the first 75 years since The Grapes of Wrath was published, it sold …

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