motherhood
Lizzie gets even
I’ve been posting submissions in the order in which I received them, which led to the mistiming of today’s entry of Billy Collins’ tribute to his mother, “The Lanyard.” Should have been last week, before Mother’s Day. That said, (said the mother), Hallmark doesn’t have a monopoly on appropriate days to thank one’s mother. Today’s […]
MoreFor two women I love
Marie Ponsot, poet, translator, teacher, stroke survivor, nonagenarian writer of acclaim who wrote for twenty-five years in obscurity, single mother of seven (six of them boys!), lifelong Catholic, writer of my all-time favorite poem “Among Women” and co-author of one of my all-time favorite childhood books, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, died a few […]
MoreDebbie (Downer) does Mother’s Day
It’s a good thing I passed by a playground before I found the cemetery I was on the hunt for. Because “Happy Mother’s Day, I see dead people” is twisted, even for a twisty elf like me. But I do see dead people this Mother’s Day—my mother who died the week before Mother’s Day […]
MoreNaughty or nice (or all of the above)
In Mind There’s in my mind a woman of innocence, unadorned but fair-featured and smelling of apples or grass. She wears a utopian smock or shift, her hair is light brown and smooth, and she is kind and very clean without ostentation– but she has no imagination […]
MoreBriefly I feel sorry for myself, and briefly grieve
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks by Jane Kenyon I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper…. When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside […]
MoreAncient words, new poems
Seven people–or rather, six people and one group–sent me poems for the “Ultraconserved Words” challenge. The prompt was to write a poem using ten or more words from a group of twenty-three words that some linguists believe have been in use since the end of the last ice age. Congratulations to all the participants! […]
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