To A Future Reader I beg you, tell me the words I left ended up funny, gave you guffaws as the planet went all to hell in ways I was not sad enough to imagine. Ave Atque Vale Farewell Priscila Uppal from Ontological Necessities, Exile Editions, 2006 This kind of takes my breath away. […]
Category Archives: General
V is for Vasquez (Gilliland) – A Journey Home to Find Where Healing Lives: In “Tales from the House of Vasquez”
May 8, 2021 – 1:33 pm
The Tale of Postpartum The doctor is ancient and I don’t think she can hear me when I say, my columna verterbral is on the outside now. She asks, do you like caring for the baby? I nod. Yes, I love caring for the baby. And then I whisper. But how long can a woman […]
W is for Wrigley – And His New Book of Essays Published by Tupelo Press: Nemerov’s Door
May 3, 2021 – 10:32 am
Machinery My father loved every kind of machinery, relished bearings, splines, windings, and cogs, loved the tolerances between moving parts and the parts that moved the parts, the many separate machines of machinery. Loved the punch, the awl, the ratchet, the pawl. In-feed and out-feed rollers of the thickness planer, its cutter head and cutters. […]
He gave Us Astonishment and a Flame, High, Bright! R.I.P. Adam Zagajewski ( June 21st,1945 – March 21st 2021
March 21, 2021 – 10:04 pm
A Flame God, give us a long winter and quiet music, and patient mouths, and a little pride – before our age ends. Give us astonishment and a flame, high, bright. Adam Zagajewski,translated by Renata Gorczynski and Clare Cavanaugh from Without End – New and Selected Poems, 2002 Oh, Adam Zagajewski was given astonishment and […]
[Not So] Silly Old Man, Wet and Laughing in the Rain – Bill Cunningham (May 16th, 1942 – January 12th, 2020) R.I.P. And You Did Not End Up Having Simply Visited This World!
January 12, 2021 – 11:39 pm
When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door […]
Finding the Poetry in the Pain – A Pandemic Anthology from Tupelo Press, Launched On-Line Dec. 6th, 2020
December 6, 2020 – 5:03 pm
Dear Tomorrow, I could do it again, watch the heron carry my grandmother’s verses to its despair garden. I could be a citizen of evergreens and tend to a homeland of weeds in the forest with something resembling love. I can accept the patience white strawberries require. I can learn prayers in the spring kingdom, […]
Shout, Shout Out from Your Tiny, Tiny Boat! An online Poetry-as-Prayer Retreat – Nov. 5, 6, and 7th, 2020 – Sponsored by Hillhurst United Church, Calgary
October 29, 2020 – 10:43 pm
This year’s title for the Hillhurst poetry-as-prayer retreat comes from the Fisherman’s Prayer as quoted by American poet Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize: Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Please consider this invitation to shout out in your own […]
“Always and Only is a Poem About Love” – The Searing Poems of a Hugely Impactful and Globally Recognized Poet and Novelist – Toshani Doshi
September 1, 2020 – 10:25 pm
from Find the Poets Find the poets, my friend said. They will not speak of the things you and I speak about. They will not speak of economic integration or fiscal consolidation. They could not tell you anything about the burden of adjustment. But they could sit you down and tell you how poems are […]
With Thanks to Robin Dyke and the Victoria Fesitival of Authors, an Interview with Lorna Crozier on her upcoming book “Through the Garden, A Love Story (with Cats)”, a Memoir of Her Life with Poet and Novelist, Patrick Lane
August 4, 2020 – 5:53 pm
A Small Ambition To be no more than mist rising above the rushes, entering the white limbs of the trees. For just one hour to be a calmness a lifting up minus bones and muscles, minus memory and cognition and your own insistent longing to last. Lorna Crozier from THE HOUSE THE SPIRIT BUILDS, (Poems […]
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 (makes) all the world a page I have to say yes. I can smell this poem as one layer devours the next your calligraphic hand […]