A Short Story, an Essay, and a Poem Every Day
I liked Ray Bradbury's advice to aspiring writers for accumulating metaphors and a solid toolbox for thinking. I don't aspire to make writing a profession, but the idea of reading a short story, an essay, and a poem every day, selecting from diverse sources and subject matter does resonate with me. Here I am simply logging my daily choices, and I fully expect to miss a day here and there, perhaps even strings of days. I'll do my best to make up for those cases.
January 13, 2026
Short Story: "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - Flannery O'Connor
Essay: "On Being an American" - H.L. Mencken
Poem: "El Despertar" - Jorge Luis Borges
January 12, 2026
Short Story: "The Standard of Living" - Dorothy Parker
Essay: "The Shapes of Grief" - Christina Sharpe
Poem: "Wild geese" - Mary J. Oliver
January 11, 2026
Short Story: "The Intoxicated" - Shirley Jackson
Essay: "How I Started to Write" - Carlos Fuentes
Poem: "16-bit Intel 8088 chip" - Charles Bukowski
January 10, 2026
Short Story: “The Country Doctor” - Kafka
Essay: “Laughing with Kafka” - DFW
Poem: “The Road Not Taken” - Robert Frost
January 9, 2026
Short Story: "The Three-Day Blow" - Hemingway
Essay: "The Joy of Writing" (Zen in the Art of Writing) - Ray Bradbury
Poem: "Stings" - Sylvia Plath
This poem was a good reminder that I've never had a talent for understanding what poets are telling us with their poems. But I can try anyway.
January 8, 2026
Short Story: "The Garden Party" - Katherine Mansfield
Essay: "Sharing the Darkness" - Carolyn Forché
Poem: "If there is ink" - Carolyn Forché (inside the above essay)
Poem: "Conversation with Jeanne" - Czeslaw Milosz
January 7, 2026
Short Story: "Theseus and the Minotaur" (Classical Greek Myth)
Short Story: "The House of Asterion" - Borges (English Translation)
Essay: "AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity: Context graphs"
Poem: "El laberinto" - Borges (Original Spanish), goes well with the selections for short story.