Weekly Reads, Poetry and Art for 30 January 2015

This week we’ll roll out a new set of features for the weekly reads. In addition to interesting news articles, I’ll be including a poem, interesting piece of art, and one spectacular sentence. If you’d like to suggest something for a future post, let me know.

Weekly Reads

Poem of the Week

Poem For My 43rd Birthday by Charles Bukowski

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine–
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
…in the morning
they’re out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers…
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
o­n your back
and out
of your eyes.

Sentence of the Week

“It was in the books while it was still in the air.” –John Updike, describing the home run Ted Williams hit in his last at-bat.

Artwork of the Week

This piece, Romans in the Decadence of the Empire (1847) by French painter Thomas Couture , was one of the most striking large paintings I saw in the Musee d’Orsay, a depiction of the excesses of the Roman Empire. My favorite details include the philosophers or visitors on the right and the statues of notable Roman leaders looking down disapprovingly on the revelers.

romans

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