Yearly Archives: 2022

The Poetic Heart of the Columnist and Scientist Yangyang Cheng. How She Captures The Fraught Spirit of Our Time

A Found Poem I cannot recall when I entered a state of perpetual mourning. I grieve for the country I left with no certain prospect of return, the direction it’s heading in, the plight of the world, the foreclosed possibilities. Sorrow tears into my organs and gnaws at my bones. But what I fear more […]

The Guest Poetry Blog Series # 3 – Canadian Poet Tonya Lailey Features U.K. Poet Naomi Jaffa – Part Two of Two

Poem for Wednesday Oh, humpback of the week, yardstick of productivity, all to play for, seesaw pivot of possibility. Is your gaze holding mine for fractionally longer than necessary a sign of desire or disgust? Will we even make it to the weekend together? Sometimes, Wednesday. I wonder why I bother. But then again it’s […]

The Guest Poetry Blog Series #3 – Introducing the Third Contributor, Canadian Poet and Sommelier, Tonya Lailey – Part One of Two

The Cat Comes to Me —after Heather McHugh The future looks like death to me from here standing behind you, in the musty basement where the cat is cornered. You think on your feet, quickly engineer a noose from a sponge mop and silicone rope – medieval design, cheap modern materials. The cat protests wildly, […]

The Guest Poetry Blog Series # 2 – Daniel Scott Features Canadian BIPOC Poet Chantal Gibson – Part Two of Two

( EDITOR’S NOTE: Please excuse the distortions in some of the photographed images of Chantal’s poems in this blog post.) Chantal Gibson from with/holding, Caitlin Press, 2021 Although we have a rich and vibrant poetry community in Canada with voices from a wide range of social locations, perspectives and poetic genres represented, we do not […]

The Guest Poetry Blog Series #2 – Introducing the Second Contributor, Canadian Poet (Among Many Other Varied Life Roles!) Daniel Scott– Part One of Two

“Please allow me to introduce myself” sang the Rolling Stones a long time ago. And so here is some background on me: Daniel Scott. I am husband ( married to Christine) father, grandfather and twice retired – once as an academic and the second time after a stint of 6 years as Artistic Director of […]

S Is For Snake – A Poem by Terry Ann Carter in the Voice of the Virtuoso Artist Niki de Saint Phalle.

                The Alphabet of Tarot (from the Diary of Niki de Saint Phalle) All day I have been in my body. At night my skull. The architecture of my mind is a building of letters. Flying, lying low, on its side A V represents a bird. The tarot […]

They Would Write About It!!! – A Tribute to Sharon Olds and Muriel Rukeyser

Physician You sit at the head of the table. You say you have wanted to write about— not depression, it is worse than that, it is rock bottom: the frightfulness. People don’t like to hear about it, you say to a friend. People don’t like to read about it, he answered— and then you knew […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Four

                                          A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck — Ilya Kaminsky from A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on its Way to the Neck from Deaf Republic, Graywolf Press, 2019 […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Three

What something in me listens —after Ilya Kaminsky I try to hear the people breathing in parkades and the sound of talking over Molotov cocktails over making them and later the fhhhhhh shatter whoosh of the toss and the blaze in the street I don’t like to play the video footage the sound a peephole […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Two

REMAIN SILENT (With thanks to Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic) Deafness passes through us like a police whistle Dogs understand everything and bark and bark Ilya Kaminsky from the poem Alfonso Stands Answerable from Deaf Republic, Graywolf Press, 2019 Teaching Dwight Not to bark when he sees Not to bark when he hears As a service […]