“Snorkeling,” by Allison Funk
The poem evocatively opens with a question: “What if, late in my life, / an old love returned?”
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Articles onPoetry
“Even Now” by Susan Zimmerman
Sometimes we rely on poetry as a sort of goad—to bear witness, expose evil or hypocrisy in others, or expose ourselves to ourselves.
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Myra Viola Wilds: “Thoughts”
“Thoughts” strikes me as a perfect poem to consider around the end of one year or the beginning of another as we take stock of what has come to pass, and make plans and resolutions for the future.
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Amy M. Clark: “The Survival Kit”
The survival kit metaphor takes on other dimensions as we come to the end of a year that has felt relentless.
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Poetry Sunday: “All the Hungry Falcons,”
by Dion O’Reilly
"I read somewhere that as falcons starve, their vision sharpens. I knew I wanted to write about that hunger and the resulting enhanced power—like a superhero’s power." — Dion O'Reilly
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Lucille Clifton: “blessing the boats,” “homage to my hips,” and “won’t you celebrate with me”
These three Lucille Clifton poems are ones I love for their fresh, fierce, and sassy voice; compression; deceptively simple diction; rejection of punctuation and other conventions; humor and honesty; and above all, their joyous message of female empowerment, agency, and strength.
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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: “Aunt Chloe’s Politics,” and Marilyn Chin: “19th Amendment Ragtime Parade”
Today poems feature works by women about voting, and about our country. They emphasize the urgency and potency of the vote, reminding us of the difficult paths many have walked to secure our representation.
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“Poem,” by Joan Naviyuk Kane
In today’s poem, “Poem,” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, the speaker’s search for a word in Inupiaq, the language of her mother, uncovers compounded losses—natural, cultural, ancestral, and personal—that have accrued over time and echo through generations.
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Athena Kildegaard:
“a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown”
In the poem’s last lines, “evidence” is a crucial word. Seeking “a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown,” perhaps, we look for scientific validation of the mystery, a concept fundamentally not susceptible to this kind of metric.
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Poetry Sunday: “Tree of Life,” by Diane Frank
I wrote “Tree of Life” after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018, to honor and grieve for my friend, Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, and the other beautiful souls who lost their lives that day.
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Poems by Lisa Rosenberg and Mini-Review of
A Different Physics
These four poems share very similar paths of creation. An unexpected sighting—backyard bird, beloved fossil, lost poet, solar eclipse—set in motion a questioning of inherited models: cultural, cognitive, and physical.
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“Even Now” by Susan Zimmerman
Sometimes we rely on poetry as a sort of goad—to bear witness, expose evil or hypocrisy in others, or expose ourselves to ourselves.
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Poetry Sunday: “Blackbody curve,” by Samiya Bashir
As enriching as it is to consider “Blackbody curve” in terms of its scientific allusions or placement in Samiya Bashir’s collection, it’s important to note that the poem stands on its own as an enjoyable and rewarding literary experience.
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Poetry Sunday:
“Before the Killing Frost,” by Diana Whitney
“Before the Killing Frost” is suffused with longing for the natural world—an almost physical grief at summer’s end—and the longing for a beloved.
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Leticia Hernández-Linares:
“One Million Minus One” and “Despierta”
The poems in 'Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl' paint their own murals in words glowing with passion and conviction. There is also a good dose of sass, a quality visually captured in book’s cover photo.
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