Young Coleman Barks

Part of the Moyers interview.

Sugar Feast/Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor

Ernest Hemingway: A Clean Well-lighted Place

Ireland

Island of Saints and Sages.

Of Beauty and Consolation: Richard Rorty

More Richard Rorty

Rorty On His Work and the Humanities

1992 Rorty Interview

Richard Rorty Interview (2005)

A fascinating conversation.

The interviewer, Robert Pogue Harrison, was clearly perplexed by Rorty's nonchalant dismissal of philosophical approaches to pressing human problems; Rorty, for his part, had long since abandoned the role of professional philosopher and was now content (near the end of his life) to simply state and restate his not particularly original faith in late 20th century American-style liberal democracy. Harrison exposes the limits of Rorty's thinking but cannot shake his retreat into a Neo-Know-Nothing politics.

Sitting

Yusuf/Cat Stevens Inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame (2014).

Bob Dylan - False Prophet (Official Audio)

Tea Time

Pastoral

William Carlos Williams.

(Photo: Joe Petersburger)

Opening the Heart Through Ecstatic Poetry: Coleman Barks

An Evening with Coleman Barks

Toshihiko Izutsu

A remarkable man.

Fihi Ma Fihi

I once said to a Koran reader, “The Koran says, ’Say, if the sea were ink to write the words of my Lord, verily the sea would fail before the words of my Lord would fail.’ Now for fifty drams of ink one can write out the whole Koran. This is but a symbol of God’s knowledge. If a druggist put a pinch of medicine in a piece of paper, would you be so foolish as to say that the whole of the drugstore is in this paper? In the time of Moses, Jesus, and others, the Koran existed; that is, God’s Word existed; it simply wasn’t in Arabic.”

This is what I tried to make that Koran reader understand, but when I saw it was having no effect on him I left.

[Discourse 18, tr. Thackston].