“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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.