“Famous Hermits in Canadian History” is a recent blog maintained by Chris McKinnon. URL: http://canadianhermits.blogspot.com/
Martha Ainsworth: Episcopal solitary
Article by Paul O’Donnell in New York Magazine titled “Hermit of the Heart,” with subtitle: “With no convent but the city itself, one woman finds a prayerful solitude as a contemplative order of one.” About Martha Ainsworth’s attempt to define a religious vocation as a solitary approved canonically by the local Episcopal bishop. Interesting example of being a hermit in the crowd.
URL: http://nymag.com/guides/mindbody/2008/42818/
Accommodations
This brief Sept. 2007 New York Times article entitled “My Life as a Hermit” by Edward Lewine was placed in the newspaper’s real estate section because of its focus on hermits trying to find suitably inexpensive places to live.
URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/realestate/keymagazine/
909HSHERMIT-t.html?ref=keymagazine
Lew Welch: “Hermit Poems”
Lew Welch was one more tragic figure of the Beat Generation poets. His poems were honed and persuasive little images, as in his “Hermit Poems” series, of which “The image, as in a Hexagram” is an example.
The image, as in a Hexagram
The hermit locks his door against the blizzard.
He keeps the cabin warm.All winter long he sorts out all he has.
What was well started shall be finished.
What was not, should be thrown away.In spring he emerges with one garment
and a single book.The cabin is very clean.
Except for that, you’d never guess
anyone lived there.
When Welch read this poem in Santa Barbara in 1967 he added, after the first line, “as in the I Ching.” He mentions in the introduction to the series that a poem is a score for voice and that he never reads a poem the same way each time.
A wonderful audio collection (no text) of Welch introducing and reading his “Hermit Poems” (and other poems) is held at the website of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. URL: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Welch.html
Seamus Heaney on hermit poets
A little essay by Seamus Heaney in the Guardian on poetry. Entitled “The Pathos of Things” the essay alludes to the hermit poets of Japan such as Basho and to Old Irish hermit poets and describes the attempt of poets ancient and modern to refine a relationship to nature and reality with short verse, whether haiku or Imagism. Originally delivered as the 2000 Lafcadio Hearn lecture.
URL: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2216007,00.html