May 18, 2017
“I am a little world made cunningly”: The Poem, the Map, the Self
“I am a little world made cunningly,” begins John Donne’s fifth Holy Sonnet. It becomes clear in the context of the poem that the subject of the sentence and line, its […]
May 15, 2017
“Before they opened me”: Affinity, Difference, and Marianne Boruch
Marianne Boruch begins her new long poem “Keats is Coughing,” published in the April 2017 issue of Poetry, with an epigraph from Leonardo da Vinci: Everything is made of everything. In […]
May 3, 2017
Margaret Atwood and The Speculative in Poetry
Online and in person, it feels like everyone’s talking about The Handmaid’s Tale, the ten-episode television series based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel of the same name, first published in 1985. […]
April 27, 2017
And The Moon Is the only Kindness We See
Dear Diane, Every time it rains, I think of you biking across Queens, and I pray you’ve already made it to work at Rikers. Often you arrive only to find […]
April 19, 2017
When Students Become Teachers
Recently an essay by a student at the school where I teach was named one of sixteen finalists in the Facing History and Ourselves essay contest. I had given him […]
April 13, 2017
This marble fact: Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “Easter”
Last year in this same season, I wrote a post titled “You Are Spring,” reflecting on the life, death, and poetry of Patrick Flynn Eckenrode, who, living with severe depression, […]
April 1, 2017
On April Fools Day The Giraffes Are in Charge & They Are Poets
“Wouldn’t it be unique to have a calf that day?” —Zookeeper Jordan Patch on April the Giraffe Today, this very first day of April, the giraffes are in charge, and […]
March 29, 2017
Confessions of a Collector
I received my first painting as a gift from grandparents (art collectors themselves) when I was four. They had commissioned a Louisiana artist to paint a small oil on canvas […]
March 22, 2017
On Sacred Spaces & Community: Jewish Poets Speak Out
March 14, 2017
“What Have We Done?” Charles M. Blow on Donald Trump
On a Saturday afternoon in mid-February, Charles M. Blow, New York Times op-ed columnist and author of the memoir Fire Shut Up In My Bones, spoke at Cleveland Public Library. […]
March 14, 2017
Voyager I Am Singing the Fire
Jews, we sing the fire. Our song is of people who care for the fire. We sang from inside fire. For thousands of years in the diaspora, our fire survived through […]
March 13, 2017
I Turned Off News Notifications and Realized the Importance of the Humanities
Just after the winter break in 2012, when I was teaching English at Indian Springs School in Alabama, I had a new student join my class. The social and political […]