ZAZEN There is nothing out there to help you. The bird is inside. Pick up your brush, and maybe you should close your eyes. Tom Crawford from Caging the Robin, […]

Grief In the night I brush my teeth with a razor Kevin Young from Book of Hours, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014 Grief The borrowed handkerchief where she wept returned to […]

Crane Red-winged blackbirds sway on willow branches. Air bends to accommodate the slight weight. Day dies in the west. The crane, rune for soul, spears a minnow with its dark […]

Listen to presences inside poems. Let them take you where they will. Follow these private hints and never leave the premises. Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), from Unseen Rain, trans. Coleman Barks […]

Jim Harrison: author of twenty one works of fiction, two books of essays, fourteen poetry books (including Dead Man’s Float published this year), a cook book, a memoir and a […]

What does refusal look like? Refusal to look at our shadow side, our rejected aspects, good and bad; and/or refusal to live on the borderlands of our lives, and past […]

The American poet Ross Gay ( 1974 – ) has won a lot of plaudits for his 2015 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude which won the 2016 Tufts Poetry Award, […]

When I think back on commencement addresses I have sat through I think of shiny, successful speakers urging the grads on to scale great heights and capture their dreams. After […]

Some say poetry does not have a role in documenting  and bearing witness to the injustice and suffering in our world. It is not a documentary art, I heard a […]

Poetry is language used with particular intensity. It is not, as many suppose decorative speech. Poets tell us what our eyes turned with too much gawking, and our ears dulled […]