I’ve recently added some work to GPS, a Global Poetry System hosted by South Bank Centre in the UK. Here are a couple of the posts:

Blake (Antarctica)

Tennyson (Antarctica)

While sorting my late father-in-law Fred’s papers, in his old office, I found a broadside of this Jack London quote:

“I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Meanwhile, last week, at his camp on the Yellow Dog Plains, masons repairing his chimney found a message he’d left when he cast the cement for the chimney cap:

I must share this terrific poem by Mark Strand, as featured on The Writer’s Almanac:

I Had Been a Polar Explorer

I had been a polar explorer in my youth
and spent countless days and nights freezing
in one blank place and then another….

* Many thanks to my bi-polar-photographer pal Stuart Klipper for bringing this poem to my attention!