Ekphrasis is the literary device of depicting a visual work with a verbal description. A new anthology, Ensnaring the Moment: On the Intersection of Poetry and Photography, gathers the ekphrastic poetry of more than 100 poets writing specifically in response to photographs. Edited by art critic Leah Ollman, this collection treats poems as gateways into images, and images as doorways into memory. In the poem “Things that Lose by Being Photographed” by Rebecca Lindenberg succinctly conjures a winter scene with moonlight sugaring snow, two people dancing slowly, and a penny-colored dog shifting paws in the cold—a moment captured in a photograph that becomes a tender meditation on ordinary beauty. This poem is shared with permission of the poet. This is part of a complete episode.
Susie Dent’s murder mystery Guilty by Definition (Bookshop|Amazon) follows a lexicographer in Oxford who becomes a sleuth of a different kind, seeking the culprit in a long-unsolved killing. A lexicographer herself, Dent includes lots of obscure and...
Mona from Riverview, Florida, grew up understanding that the word schmooze, which comes from Yiddish, meant simply “to mingle and chat” at parties, but when she fondly referred to her friend as a schmoozer, the friend was insulted, assuming that a...
