Archive - Might Stain Your Shirt

POETS Day! Richard Wilbur’s Tea with Sylvia and Mrs Plath

It would be a sad bit of trivia but for Wilbur’s poem.

Jan 16 • Ben Sears

POETS Day! Eliot’s 1st Part of the 2nd of Four Quartets

I don’t doubt that I can enjoy free verse as I often do, but am I handicapped? Is there a level of appreciation I don’t know exists.

Jan 9 • Ben Sears

December 2025

Southern Style Smothered Pork Chops

I stick with the meat-and-three tradition of using the cheap breakfast style chops, but I throw in some white wine and herb de Provence because I’m a…

Dec 22, 2025 • Ben Sears

POETS Day! Eliot’s Magi

Waiting for deliverance and searching for enlightenment share an end, but I don’t think Eliot likes that meta stuff.

Dec 19, 2025 • Ben Sears

POETS Day! “Sunset” by e.e. cummings

It’s useful to consider how and why the innovators did as they did.

Dec 5, 2025 • Ben Sears

How did Pete Golding pull that off?

How did a pretty-to-damn-good assistant with no head coaching experience just become the permanent head coach of an SEC standout?

Dec 5, 2025 • Ben Sears

November 2025

POETS Day! Charles Mackay of Extraordinary Popular Delusions Fame

Charles Mackay's poems are very passable replications of poetry, and he has a marvelous talent for following example. He’s a good baker.

Nov 21, 2025 • Ben Sears

Spicy Pineapple Collard Greens and The Great Vowel Shift

My home version of a tonier restaurant's Spicy Pineapple Collard Greens. It seems off the wall, and it is, but it's very good.

Nov 19, 2025 • Ben Sears

POETS Day! “The Waste Land” Lees

The poem is dedicated to Ezra Pound with line “il miglior fabbro”: “the better craftsman.” That’s fawning. But...

Nov 14, 2025 • Ben Sears

Mac & Cheese That’s Only Comparatively Time Consuming to Make

Spend some time doing things the way people had to do way back in Eisenhower days.

Nov 11, 2025 • Ben Sears

POETS Day! Ernest Dowson

He was more of a carouser than ballroom type, but did a little time at Oxford when students were gentlemen expected to be up on proper tie knots, Latin…

Nov 7, 2025 • Ben Sears

Sweeter-Than-Intended-by-the-Dutch Brussels Sprouts

They could have had fries.

Nov 4, 2025 • Ben Sears

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