On the morning I left London, while killing time in my hotel room, I fired up The New Yorker poetry podcast which, shame on me, I rarely do. It’s a podcast in which a living poet, who has been published in The New Yorker (good luck with that), reads a poem by someone else that was published sometime in the NY’s history. It gets discussed between the reader and the NY’s poetry editor . In the end, the reading poet gets to read one of his own poems too. Really, it’s a podcast I should listen to routinely; new resolution! Anyway, I picked an episode at random, which turned out to be Richard Blanco reading a poem by Elizabeth Bishop . Here it is: Published in the print edition of the January 21, 1956, issue What serendipity! There’s a lot to unpack in this poem but in it, Bishop is considering what makes us want to travel, whether it measures up to what we imagine, is...
Today was my last full day and I spent some of it shopping in an attempt to use up the British cash I over-brought. I purchased a few things and got in a good long walk at the same time. After a chill afternoon packing, I decided to take one last walk to see the man in the clock . I had heard about this before coming and realized yesterday that the clock is close by – just on the other side of Paddington station. I’ve walked to Paddington station countless times in the past two weeks but had never ventured on the other side. Sure enough, it was right there! I continued walking around this part of Paddington and acquired a better appreciation for this area. There are some lovely, residential streets lined with Georgian style row houses and overhung with beautiful trees. I would have felt much more like I was “living like a local” had we been able to stay in this part of Paddington, but I get it that it...