We’ve noticed that many people have been seeking out this poem by Rilke on our website this week. It feels like a meditation and a salve for this fraught, uncertain moment in the world. So, we’re sharing it here as well.
Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. His poem, “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower,” is read here by Joanna Macy. ... Show More
May 14
Michael Pollan — The Mystery of Consciousness
From Krista: Michael Pollan’s latest book, A World Appears, is an exploration — with scientists and journalists and technologists and spiritual teachers — of what consciousness is, and is not, or might be: from the plants which have always fascinated him, to the new technologies ... Show More
1h 14m
Feb 2025
Possibility and Loss in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
In his poem “You Who Never Arrived,” Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that we can mourn love as an unrealized possibility, and see this loss signified everywhere in the ordinary objects of the external world. In “Be Ahead of All Parting” (II.13 from his “Sonnets to Orpheus”), he seems ... Show More
46m 1s
Mar 2022
We Hope You Think of Poetry
Today we are transitioning from Taylor-as-poet to Taylor’s literal poetry, circa 1999 and 2017. We’re reading Taylor’s three published poems — A Monster In My Closet!, Why She Disappeared, and If You’re Anything Like Me — and talking about why they feel like a new kind of peek in ... Show More
1 h