Yearly Archives: 2020

Mourning Must Not Overwhelm Gratitude – The Hard-Won Wisdom of Jane Hirschfield – Two Poems from Her Latest Book: Ledger and a Poem She So Likes by Gerard Manley Hopkins

August 4, 2020 – 12:22 pm

My Debt Like all who believe in the senses, I was an accountant, copyist, statistician. Not registrar, witness. Permitted to touch the leaf of a thistle, the trembling work of […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , Comments (2)

The 2020 Recovering Words’ Virtual La Romita Poetry Retreat!!! Covid- 19 Kiboshed the On-Site Umbrian Version So We Meet Online Instead!

June 18, 2020 – 11:18 pm

A Cento by Nancy Issenman Say Yes Sniff the naked page It is time to praise! white ash, sassafras so beautiful on the tongue waves of language across the skin […]

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Coda – The Water Keeps On Keeping On – Three Poets on Water – Lane, Diaz and Owen

June 2, 2020 – 3:42 pm

LAST WATER SONG It was not the water you tried to find when you were young. That was the water that lost you. You climbed trees to look and the […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , Comments (0)

Rivers and What They Carry – Part Two – River as Wound and Solace – The Continuing Journey Through Grief and Loss in the New Poetry Collection “Riven” by Catherine Owen

May 31, 2020 – 11:28 pm

                  Come to the window — you call to me Come to the window — you call to me — I, wanting […]

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Rivers and What They Carry – Part One – River Poems and River Poem Sequences by Natalie Diaz and Catherine Owen

May 17, 2020 – 4:40 pm

  Running the Rivers with N and C   — For Natalie Diaz and Catherine Owen How to write the unruly, the unsettled, words forever water, slipping past always and […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (0)

Patrick’s Poets – #4 in a Series – Linda Crosfield of Ootischenia, B.C.!

May 14, 2020 – 4:42 pm

I Wish I Could Tell You, John Prine The time I saw you live you were opening for Arlo Guthrie but it was you I went to see. You played […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged Comments (6)

The Great Gift of Women Poets – Another Poem in Memory of Eavan Boland (1944-2020)

April 28, 2020 – 1:51 pm

Time and Violence The evening was the same as any other. I came out and stood on the step. The suburb was closed in the weather of an early spring […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (2)

Eavan Boland (Sept. 24th, 1944 – April 27th, 2020) – Your Poetic Marvels – Poems to grow Old In. To Die In. And Now Your Very Real Death – R.I.P.

April 28, 2020 – 11:46 am

A WOMAN PAINTED ON LEAF I found it among curios and silver in the pureness of wintry light. A woman painted on a leaf. Fine lines drawn on a veined […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (2)

A Look Inside the Surprising Heart and Mind of American Poet Carl Phillips – A Poem From His 2018 Collection Wild Is The Wind and One from His 2020 Collection, Pale Colours in a Tall Field

April 25, 2020 – 7:49 pm

WHAT I SEE IS THE LIGHT FALLING ALL AROUND US To have understood some small piece of the world more deeply doesn’t have to mean we’re not as lost as […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged Comments (2)

For Now the Dunes Are [NOT] Sure – R.I.P. Glynn Irby, U.S. Gulf Coast Poet and Luminous Human

April 25, 2020 – 2:09 pm

Imagi 31 In a ratcheting wind, salt grasses twist around November roots and the olive-hued saw palms throb against their crowns. For now, the dunes are sure. Yet, as sea-foam […]

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , Comments (2)