I loved poetry as a child. My father read us picture books written in rhyme; my siblings and I read to each other Hilaire Bellock’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts and Cautionary Tales for Children; and we studied Struwwelpeter to keep us appalled. But the poetry books I kept coming back to were A.A. [...]

Is this a ‘messy desk’ contest? I may have the winning entry.

In truth, I’m not crazy about having a messy desk; it doesn’t quite keep me awake at night, but I’d much prefer an ordered, symmetrically (my math background) organized workspace, files here, references there, phone in the charger where it belongs. Instead, my desk [...]