Tag Archives: poems

June 30, 2012, 10:42 pm

MacFarlane’s ‘Ted,’ Waugh’s ‘Sebastian,’ and Betjeman’s ‘Archie’

Grown men with teddy bears? A new movie with Mark Wahlberg? The 1981 Granada series with Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons? A heartbreaking poem about a teddy bear– mentioning Adler, Jung and Freud in its final stanza?

Okay, so my first thought, when faced with grown men and furry toys, is of the terribly well-groomed Aloysuis belonging to Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”

Then I think immediately of Archie, a.k.a. Archibald Ormsby-Gore, the strict Baptist teddy bear belonging to John Betjeman, upon whom Aloysuis was based.

Only after these furry figures do I think of adorable Mark Wahlberg and the trailers I’m seeing everywhere about the new movie, Ted, in which Wahlberg stars with a stuffed bear of his own.

I love Wahlberg (and Matt Damon, with whom I will sometimes confuse him, even in print) and I am a big Family Guy and…

December 29, 2011, 1:54 pm

Advice, Please! What’s the Best New Year’s Poem?

By Gina Barreca

Roxanne Coady, owner of one of the world’s best independent bookstores, R.J. Julia’s, and a dynamic, brilliant woman who makes it her personal responsibility to get people reading (www.justtherightbook.com), e-mailed me the following question: “Every year I send out a NY poem—one that’s smart or witty and inspiring without being sappy. After years of having no problem discovering exactly the right piece, I’m having trouble finding one. Any ideas?”

Roxanne is not the kind of woman you want to let down.

I spent part of yesterday morning looking for my favorite New York poems. Yes, I am that much of a genius. That’s why people rely on me. The fact that my friend told me she sent out poems once a year on December 31st did not clue me into the fact that “NY” could represent anything except the Empire State.

I went so far as to send her a link to Mark Doty’s poem “Broadway,” with it…