Tomorrow, my wife Joan and I will begin a slow drive south, to Anchorage and then the Kenai. Homer is the destination, though not really the point. I often create this way. In motion, my mind clears, and, as in sunlight after a storm, worlds both fictional and real reappear. At every stop, I pull …
“Iceland AGAIN!!” exclaims my friend Kelly Grey Carlisle.* Yep. I’m here again. Part of the reason I came to bicycle here this summer was to get my fill of it. Not to get tired of it, exactly, but to feel I knew the country enough to be able to settle into it. I struggle with …
In Laugur, after a short ride on a very bumpy road, I found what has so far been my favorite campground in Iceland. It was un-crowded, surrounded by trees, giving a rare sense of privacy, and the grass where I pitched my tent had been recently mowed. “You’ve come to the right place,” said the …
The bus driver drove like the proverbial hellbat, as if he was behind schedule, And perhaps he was. Perhaps he was behind schedule because of the bicyclist, and the bike that needed to be fit into a space in a bin beneath the bus, since the bike racks on the bus were already full. To fit …
I write this from inside Langabud, the oldest building in Djúpavogi, a town on the southeast coast. Part coffee shop, part museum, it was built sometime between 1740 and 1790. It is full of surprises. The first floor displays work by the artist/sculptor Rikadur Jonsson. Part of the display is busts of some of …
The flight from Anchorage to Reykjavik moves from afternoon to morning, skipping night altogether. The effect is deliciously disorienting. I arrived at my hotel just after 8 am, or what would be midnight back in Alaska. The hotel clerk was gracious enough to let me check in. I could have slept. Instead I walked outside …
“Genuine poetry can communicate before it’s understood.” T.S. Eliot Earlier tonight, I sat at a table with four poets. They are each successful and brilliant, and each came to poetry in their own unique way. One of them stumbled into a prestigious graduate program only after dropping out of school. “The last thing in the world …