Women's Voices For Change

Today’s poem is a sad one, but in it the speaker’s great love for her father shines through, and that makes it beautiful. In telling her story, the speaker shows how well she has been taught by her father, and his great love for literature lives on in her person and writing, a living legacy and a wonderful poem for Father’s Day.

Whether or not we share the chagrin and distress felt by the speaker in “Let Them Not Say,” we are all undeniably part of a generation that will be judged by future generations. We all have skin in this game. That is a powerful message, regardless of which side of the current political controversy you now occupy.

In “Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad," the focus is on the human loss in the bombing, and the message is personal and painful. In 20 free verse lines, the poem takes us to Al-Mutanabbi street after the blast, in the company of a father searching for the remains of a son who’d gone there to shop for a writing notebook.

"In all the flux, what remains unchanged is my passionate love for women. That love—along with the question, "Who would want to be with me?"—was my biggest fear when I decided to transition." —Diana Goetsch

“Butterflies by a Lake” is a lyric poem, one that captures an intense feeling at a moment in time. I love the poem for its simple eloquence and its ability to describe a beauty not apparent to others.

Climate is a character in this week’s poem, “The Chill of Grace,” by Cathryn Shea. By way of a literary device known as personification, it attributes human qualities to nature, making the wind, for example, into something capable of feeling emotion.

Today’s poem pays homage not just to its purported subject, Vivian Maier, but to all women, artists or not, whose creative work remains unknown.

I love the poem’s strong, brave assertions and authority in claiming a place for women poets in the pantheon of literary achievement.