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What Age is Worth
Years ago I discovered Ausonius in Helen Waddell‘s wonderful book The Wandering Scholars. (See the first part of my earlier post.) Although I took three semesters of Latin in high school, I promptly forgot most of it, and so my effort to translate the Ausonius epigram below relied on a Latin dictionary and a Loeb Library translation by Hugh G. Evelyn White.Read More
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Lois Hayna and the Strangeness of Beauty Perfected
I am thrilled to let everyone know that my friend and fellow poet Lois Hayna has been awarded the Colorado Authors’ League’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. Congratulations, Lois! I first met Lois when she joined a poetry workshop I taught for now defunct Rocky Mountain Writers Guild back in the mid-1970s.Read More
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Creating the Possible
“There is something Chinese about Ausonius,” Helen Waddell writes of the late-late Roman poet (c. 310-c. 395 CE) in The Wandering Scholars, and then compares him to Po Chü-i. She quotes from one of Ausonius’s poems, “Fields of the Sorrowful Lovers”: They wander in deep woods, in mournful light, Amid long reeds and drowsy-headed poppies, And lakes where no water laps, and voiceless streams, Along whose banks in the dim light grow old Flowers that were once bewailèd names of Kings.Read More