I Stop Writing the Poem –Tess Gallagher From They Say This to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I’m still a woman. I’ll always have plenty to do. I bring the arms of his shirt together.…
Poetry: What Happened When Bobby Jack Cockrum Tried To Bring Home A Pit Bulldog or What His Daddy Said To Him that Day
What Happened When Bobby Jack Cockrum Tried To Bring Home A Pit Bulldog or What His Daddy Said To Him that Day –David Lee From A Legacy of Shadows: Selected Poems Son let me tell you the story of the…
Poetry: Girder
Girder –Nan Cohen From Rope Bridge The simplest of bridges, a promise that you will go forward, that you can come back. So you cross over. It says you can come back. So you go forward. But even if you…
Poetry: The Worriers’ Guild
The Worriers’ Guild –Philip F. Deaver From How Men Pray Today there is a meeting of the Worriers’ Guild, and I’ll be there. The problems of Earth are to be discussed at length end to end …
QOTD: Robert Hayden
We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us. –Robert Hayden, poet and educator (1913-1980)
Poetry: What We Need
What We Need –David Budbill From While We’ve Still Got Feet The Emperor, his bullies and henchmen terrorize the world every day, which is why every day we need a little poem of kindness, a small song of peace a…
Poetry: Fairy Tale
Fairy Tale –Ron Padgett From You Never Know The little elf is dressed in a floppy cap and he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrows with short legs and a jaunty step, though sometimes he glides across…
Poetry: At the Children’s Violin Concert
At the Children’s Violin Concert –Susan Cataldo From drenched: Selected Poems of Susan Cataldo Firmly bowed strands of horse hair tightened or gathered up by a small hand to play a piece by J.S. Bach who…
Poetry: Why Do Poets Write?
Why do poets write? –Richard Jones From The Blessing My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps through my reading and writing in bed, the half-whispered lines, manuscripts piled between us, but in the deep part of night when her beeper sounds she…
Poetry: The Phenomenology of Shopping
The Phenomenology of Shopping –Alison Hawthorne Deming From Genius Loci Fax it to me he said and I said I will though it meant since I was living in a cabin on the coast driving to town and chatting with…