Women's Voices For Change

“Elegy with Civil War Shadowbox” is a meditation on the challenges of memorializing war.

March is an important harbinger of seasonal change and new life. I hope this sweet poem will blow into your day like a gust of wind, chilly and wet, but also with a promise of spring coming soon.

In deference to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s extraordinarily prolific and largely unsung writing career, I am offering three poems here today.

February is Black History Month, and the next four columns will be devoted to work by black women writers. In today’s, contemporary poet Camille Dungy presents a poem by Phillis Wheatley.

By the end of the poem the speaker wholly identifies with Thor, capable of destruction as well as creation and blessing, and the poem ends in a place of tremendous raw power and confidence with her joyfully striking the flat glowing disc of her “own sun.” What a wonderful affirmation of the act of creativity!

I was hooked by "Yuletide," then drawn in by the breathless, energetic style offering a fresh take on an old story of love, loss, and redemption.

Christina Rossetti was devoted to deep Christian conviction and a rich artistic sensibility. Both influences can be seen in this poem’s spare, even stark diction that seems to belie the intensity of its imagery and underlying religious themes.

We each see, hear, sense what we think we’re saying or hearing; but often that connection to another is lost. And silence looms in the air.