A small book that rewards savoring

Nobody Is Ever Missing by Cody Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cody Wilson's chapbook is rich in simple but vital language evoking real emotion from real experience. "Nobody is Ever Missing" strikes the right balance between mourning the awareness of mortality and celebrating the living.

In "The Dust of Us" Wilson imagines himself dead and present only in the dust that drifts around us:

"You can print your finger
in me, drag me across the table...

You watch me float
though the narrow fingers
0f light knuckled by each blind..."


A small book. "Nobody" is one that rewards savoring its clear poetry.

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Congratulations to Poetry Society of Virginia member, Bill Glose, on winning first place in the Heroes’ Voices poetry competition

Congratulations to Poetry Society of Virginia member, Bill Glose, on winning first place in the Heroes’ Voices poetry competition,

My poem "Down" is available in the Fall 2017 issue of The Write Place at the Write Time.

My poem "Down" is available in the Fall 2017 issue of The Write Place at the Write Time.

“It's never too late to make a better world.” A rational optimist says we are not in decline.

It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear by Gregg Easterbrook
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you are contented by feeling that this is the worst of all possible times, that hordes of immigrants are destroying our nation, that crazy people of the left or the right are the enemy of all good, that we will run out of everything, that the world is ending soon, this is not the book for you.

By the same token, if you are looking for unicorns and flying silver puppies, this realistic analysis will not satisfy you.

But Gregg Easterbrook’s rational optimism is hopeful without being pollyannish. It is a useful antidote to almost everything else you will read on the best seller list, on social media sites, and in the headlines that all scream declinism. And he is critical of all political parties and tribal slatnts

We do have work to do, crises to face, problems to solve, hard decisions to make, the temptations of autocratic hero leaders to avoid.

But as the author writes, “it's never too late to make a better world.”

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