Women's Voices For Change

This is a narrative poem, one that tells a story or focuses more on the events being described than on the speaker’s feelings in reaction to those events. As such, it allows for the passage of time rather than arresting us in one dramatic moment.

There is a long tradition of writing poems in praise of specific individuals, typically epic heroes in ancient times but more and more about ordinary people in contemporary times.

Today’s poem for Veterans Day does more than just pay homage to soldiers fallen in battle; it also carries an implicit critique of the wars that give rise to such battles.

“All Hallows Eve, Edgewater Inn” is both an occasional poem about Halloween and a pastoral poem, one where a speaker’s contemplation of a natural landscape triggers inner reflection.

One strength of today’s poem, though, is that it works even for readers not familiar with that infamous case involving a Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious young woman behind a dumpster. Even before #metoo, sexual assaults like this are common enough, unfortunately, that readers will get the gist.

This brief lyric poem captures a moment familiar to most parents experiencing dismay at the state of the world and the need to grapple with that in the context of having children they want to protect.

Poems like this one that demand more of the reader’s attention and effort risk being passed over by readers unwilling to make the investment. But they reward readers who do.

The poem’s title is, in a way, its redemption. The poet explains that the dreaded nuclear attack did not come during the speaker’s childhood (or yet), and thanks the man she credits with saving the United States from that fate during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.