46 Comments

The layers of engagement in your footnote about the East India Company ... wow. (Thank you for including the link to my piece on it! There are so many lessons to learn about the entwinement of corporate and state power.)

And I was recently listening to something about Kafka, whom I often forget worked in insurance for much of his life, and wrote in after hours.

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Thank you, Antonia. Your piece on the EIC was great.

Yes, there's an essay or two waiting to be unpacked in that footnote. The prisons that we create!

BTW Wallace Stevens also worked in insurance, didn't he?

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Also ts Eliot in banking

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Another of those splendid "gentle-souled" :), perambulatory and elliptical essays you write with such accomplishment, Jeffrey. And more Larkin!

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Thank you, Jay. Yes, more Larkin. He has a habit of cropping up. I should probably set myself a quota for the maximum number of posts in which I'm allowed to quote him.

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😂

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It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so engaged by an explication of poetry - long a trial, graded by English professors, and done with the intention of being awarded good grades. Thank you for sharing these thoughts in such an accessible and meaningful way.

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It makes me so glad to hear this, Kris. There will never be any exams or grades in the English Republic of Letters!

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Same for me, Kris!

Jeffrey, really enjoyed this essay - the first one I read of yours.

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Thank you, Ollie. I'm very glad it worked for you.

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Thank you for starting my weekend with such a lovely hymn to nature’s restorative presence in our lives. Although you are undoubtedly masterful at your lyrical descriptions, I find your nuanced examination of our interior landscapes to be the most compelling aspect of your writing style in projecting our shared quest to find a place of full presence in our hearts & minds—no matter the literal setting. I will ponder the theme of how stasis limits our perception of external beauty & an interior recognition of the sustenance it provides—a quietly convicting message to me.

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Thank you for such a lovely reflection, Alisa. Your use of the term “stasis” prompts me to remember a word I came across in my day job, “sessile.” in the sense of fixed in one place. The contrast between them seems interesting to me. Stasis suggests a temporary state, even if long held. Sessile is a permanent condition. I find myself wondering which parts of me are in stasis, which are sessile.

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Discerning distinction—and often so difficult to distinguish one from the other in the course of daily life—along with determining what must be preserved at all costs to maintain one’s essential sense of selfhood. You have given me a great deal to ponder—perhaps the most meaningful form of praise I can render.

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The house opposite me is surrounded by very tall linden/lime trees that give shelter to the local rooks. I'm ashamed to say that, until recently, these trees have captivated little of my attention. I think this is partly due to the fact that they are surrounded by a very high wall, so I have to look up to see them. These trees now have rich associations thanks to your writing today 😊

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Thank you, Nicola. I hope you will enjoy them!

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This August, I have been imprisoned by sickness and had to postpone my small summer plans. The window of my room is entirely shaded by trees in summer, maple trees. So I sit or lie in the shifting yellow green light of the maple canopy and wait to get well.

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I hope the shade of the trees bring comfort and that you get well very soon, Holly.

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The lime tree, the poem, the memories described--an essay that is poetry in prose and will move you like the bees that swirl and make for flowers, honey, and hope, both literal and metaphorical with insights that will continue to hold you--your hymn to summer.

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Thank you so much for your lovely words, Mary! It's you that's created a poem!

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This is wonderful Jeffrey! I recently re-acquainted myself with lime trees and beech trees and chestnut trees during our extended visit to the UK. And home… as you know I was thinking about my two homes recently too. It’s very complicated. Thank you for the poetry too. And what is so comforting about bees, and honey?

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Thank you, Emma. Yes, bees and honey seem so redolent of everything simple and good, don't they?

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Yes - I was thinking about it. The reassuring buzzing. Recently I watched them climbing into the foxglove flowers at my sister's house and then reversing out again!

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Honestly, I haven't looked at Coleridge in years, not closely anyway. I love these poems. The purple shadows! The layers of light. It certainly reads like impressionist paintings. Thank you for your wonderful explorations, Jeffrey.

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Thank you for your thoughtful reading and reflection, Kate. There is a marvelous lyrical intensity about his work, isn't there?

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Thank you for sharing the poetry in this piece, and the history (I was not familiar with Lamb’s work, in particular).

Also, I have been meaning to comment on this from some of your previous pieces but I thoroughly enjoy seeing the images that you include from your own photos to the opening image.

Thank you!

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Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate your comments and I'm so glad that you found points of interest in the essay.

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Alas, now I wish I lived in linden country to try linden honey.

I will have to settle for these evocations of the tree by you and Coleridge. That will do. I can feel the shady temperature dropping as we speak .... Lovely! :-)

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Thank you so much, Tara! There's nothing like the shade of a tree on a hot day, is there?

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Fascinating! I visited the Crescent a year ago...wish I had paid more attention to the trees. and I loved the footnotes too.

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Thank you, Jan. The pedant in me has a lot of fun with footnotes...

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Lovely, Jeffrey! The line "For Coleridge, home was not the place where he found himself on that summer evening, but a place of imagination, accompanying his friends and his fancy wherever they roamed" reminds me of "Kubla Khan," of course. I enjoyed the occasion to re-read that "fragment" as well as all the lines you quoted from "Lime Tree."

The linden tree (and the footnote to Antonia Malchik's piece, which I'll have to read now) also reminded me of a wonderful essay by Jamaica Kincaid called "In History." It was published in Callaloo and only available through subscription so I can't link to it, but I hope you can find it. In it she traces the history of her own home land, in the Caribbean, through the names colonizers imposed there (like Antigua, from Columbus's home church). That leads her back to Carl Linnaeus, whose family took their name from the linden tree, and the imperial consequences of that enlightenment impulse to "name" (really re-name) the world. The essay is powerful and painful and also beautiful. Like you, she pays close attention to individual words-- like a poet. (Kincaid is also a gardener, which shows too.)

Thanks for this!

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Thank you, Victoria! That's fascinating and I really want to read that essay. So a Linden tree, Linnaeus's name, becomes a kind of Enlightenment Tree of Knowledge (as well as dispossession).

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Wonderful writing. And yes, Lime trees are lovely - just never park your car under them!

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Thank you, June and great advice 😂

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Enjoyed this very much, especially how it pulls together the different threads so beautifully.

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Thank you, Maria! One of the most ejoyable aspects of writing an essay is untangling the threads, isn't it? Of course, sometimes they remain a mess, but it's great when a pattern emerges - and even better when one of my wonderful readers notices! 😊

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This English usage confused me for the longest time: "Lime trees" don't give limes? I live in California where we actually do grow limes.

But I finally figured out that that must NOT be what they mean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia

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Yes well I was puzzled by Wallace Stevens "heavy hemlocks" in UK hemlock is a small herbaceous plant 2ft high used for poisoning Socrates

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Yes, it's confusing, isn't it. And Linden Tree is such a lovely name; I'm not sure another one was required.

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