As we enter the new year, Every Day Poems editor Richard Maxson considers how we have persisted in a difficult year, and how we continue, if we want it.
Pandemic Journal: An Entry on How We Learn
Richard Maxson reflects on the miracles of our pandemic days, the occurrences that don’t just happen but are a result of hope, faith and effort.
Adjustments Book Club: Homecomings
In the final installment of our book club discussion of Adjustments, Rick Maxson reflects on what makes a home, and what makes it possible for a person to come home again.
Adjustments Book Club: Messages Out of the Dark and Dancing in the Lights
In this week’s Adjustments book club, Rick Maxson reflects on what it means, in Archibald MacLeish’s words, to take the world, and on Will Phillips’ fumbling acceptance of his many selves.
Adjustments Book Club: We Note Our Place With Book Markers
How does friendship play a role in identifying, and going on to meet, our needs? Explore the relationship between new friends Will and Joe in Rick Maxson’s first Adjustments Book Club installment.
Book Club Announcement: Adjustments by Will Willingham
The best books are those that invite us into a world we would never have thought to enter. Adjustments by Will Willingham is such a book and such a world. Join Richard Maxon for our latest book club discussion beginning Nov. 18.
Introvert Paradise: To Find the Imperial Friend, Part II
Richard Maxson concludes his reflection on growing up and finding the confidence to live as himself, this time in the engine of a white ’64 GTO.
Introvert Paradise: To Find the Imperial Friend
Richard Maxson understands the respite an introvert finds in the space of his own head in this tender piece about coming of age on an exotic international journey.
Memoir Notebook: Three Summers, Part 2: Bucking Hay
Richard Maxson continues his boyhood farming tale, reflecting on the harvest of transcendent memories cultivated in an alfalfa field.
Memoir Notebook: Three Summers, Part One: The Seed
A city boy goes to spend the summer on a farm in rural Ohio, and the experience stays with him into his golden years, still surprising him with the way it reveals plain and not-so-plain truths.
Memoir Notebook: Waterfall of Sweet Dreams—Conclusion: Bird on a Wire
In this final installment of his Waterfall of Sweet Dreams Memoir series, Richard Maxson leaves Hollywood to pursue new dreams imparted by an English professor.
Memoir Notebook: Waterfall of Sweet Dreams—Part III: Disenchantment
The disenchantment of the acting life sends Richard Maxson toward the greater question of what will really bring him happiness.
Memoir Notebook: Waterfall of Sweet Dreams—Part II: Bummer and the Rat
Richard Maxson struggled to embrace his Hollywood dream of becoming an actor until he befriended a stray cat he named Bummer.
Memoir Notebook: Waterfall of Sweet Dreams—Part I: The Call
That is exactly how he thought of acting—as just another job. One day Richard Maxson looked up the number of Columbia Pictures Studios and made the call.
Memoir Notebook: In the Jingle Jangle Morning, 1965
A young Richard Maxson takes off in the Jingle Jangle Morning of Bob Dylan’s “Tambourine Man” on a cross country road trip and into his own Tomorrowland.
The Best Buildings: Carnegie Library—Eureka Springs, Arkansas
The broad shoulders of a compact building donated by Andrew Carnegie rises from the bluffs of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. On its front: FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Memoir Notebook: Searching for Arkansas
Rick Maxson and his family have lived many places, but their search for home ultimately led them to the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
Memoir Notebook: Molly and the Thieves
In our latest Memoir Notebook, Richard Maxson remembers his beloved German Shepherd Molly, in a tale of love, loss, and a band of thieves.
Emily Dickinson and The Sea: A Poem of Transcendence
Is Emily Dickinson’s ‘I Started Early – Took My Dog’ really just about the sea? Or is it something more? This poem analysis argues for transcendence.
Poetry in the Cubicle: The Weight of the Poem
What do you do with the poem you cannot write? You follow it. Even if it never leaves the four square walls of your office cubicle. Join Richard Maxson for Poetry at Work.