Thank you to everyone who sent in a haiku! Can’t tell you how much I enjoy reading them. It’s a balm for my nervous system. The creative spirit is fundamental to us humans and strengthens our connections! Up first from Jeanette, who gets extra credit for taking a picture: (Jeanette has a very droll […]
MoreI am in need of music, poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her poem of the same name. I am in need of distraction, I find myself saying, and how nice!, distraction is everywhere— funny animal videos, show-me-your-dance-moves Instagram accounts (shout-out to my daughters), clips of Italian mayors shouting at their constituents who won’t stay […]
MoreFrom “A Married State” by Katherine Philips A married state affords but little ease The best of husbands are so hard to please. This in wives’ careful faces you may spell Though they dissemble their misfortunes well. Someone wrote on Twitter the other day that being in lockdown reminded her of being […]
MorePoem in Thanks by Thomas Lux Lord Whoever, thank you for this air I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch in the woods, the wood for fire, the light—both lamp and the natural stuff of leaf-black fern, and wing. For the piano, the shovel for ashes, the moth-gnawed blankets, the stone-cold water […]
MoreFor the last pairing of January men poems, I’m featuring poems so opposite in tone it’s giving me an idea for a buddy comedy. First up is John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14.” “Dream Song 14” is one of 385 dream songs told through Berryman’s alter-ego character of Henry. Henry sometimes speaks in the first […]
MoreI’m trying to get my old men/sad men poems posted before the end of January—I got waylaid by a broken laptop and a too-long repair job (truly the techno-dog ate my homework)—so to keep things moving along I’ll post two short poems today and the longer ones by Friday. Then I can say fare-thee-well to the […]
MoreHere at the beginning of the 20thyear of the 21stcentury; in the spirit of “out with the old, in with the new”; bearing in mind the cartoon personification of the passing year as a weary white-haired fellow; in special consideration of those readers of age to shudder at Father Time; with a sympathetic nod to […]
MoreOn a fall day in New York City I left a poem in Central Park . . . poem is on bench under orange sign Women and Horses by Maxine Kumin “After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric.” -Theodor Adorno After Auschwitz: after ten of my father’s kin— the ones who stayed—starved, […]
MoreRespite by Jane Hirshfield Day after quiet day passes. I speak to no one besides the dog. To her, I murmur much I would not otherwise say. We make plans then break them on a moment’s whim. She agrees; though sometimes bringing to my attention a small blue ball. Passing the […]
MoreA sunny day in northern Michigan. A long walk past farmland and on to a wooded trail. Three Seamus Heaney poems to deliver, three poems full of the most beautiful nouns and verbs but also full of death. Three watchful deer who scared the bejeebers out of me and two wrong turns that added miles […]
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