February 25, 2018
“At last you’re tired of this elderly world:” Towards a New Judaism through Poetry
We harness ourselves over and over wherever hope is a yellow shore. —“Nomad,” Robin Beth Schaer Decades later, no, I still can’t let it go: that Rosh Hashanah my […]
February 16, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XV: Some Sonnets)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XIV: Stein’s Sonnet)”] I’m going by memory and intuition here in tracing some kind of history of the formally subversive American sonnet – I hope […]
February 7, 2018
On Writing Naked, Bloody, in Exile
Write naked. That means to write what you would never say. Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it. Write in exile, as if you […]
January 11, 2018
The Little Mermaid and the Little Girl Writer Part Two
While Ariel barters her art for romance, Ursula remains witchy and creative. As she sings her story-song in the film, she conjures images of what she’s describing above her cauldron […]
January 3, 2018
Thinking of Wallace Stevens in Winter
A snowy morning seems the perfect time to revisit two Wallace Stevens winter-snow-philosophy poems that have lived inside me since I first read them years ago, “Thirteen Ways of Looking […]
December 30, 2017
A Better Tomorrow
I’m in Hong Kong with my husband and his family for the holidays, and finishing up a longer work on what I envision would be a better tomorrow. It will […]
December 17, 2017
On Stones, New Eternities & Poetry
To our land, and it is a prize of war, the freedom to die from longing and burning and our land, in its bloodied night, is a jewel that glimmers […]
December 11, 2017
A Condensed List of Things Men Have Said to Me in the Age of Trump
This past Friday, I run into an acquaintance at a grocery store. Earlier I’d woken up tired and aching; it seemed that my bronchitis had returned, or was not yet finished […]
November 25, 2017
Mix-Tape III: Thankfulness as Wakefulness
Over the autumn break this week, my husband and I flew to South Texas to spend time with my family. Less than a week ago, my Aunt Olivia had been […]
November 21, 2017
That Time I Fell in Love with Gargantua (Is Always Now)
In a way, I learned to love my home better by saying goodbye to it… For so long I had alternated between hating and cherishing it; now, finally, I […]
November 16, 2017
A Brief Measure of Richard Wilbur
I noticed that several poets the other day, responding to the latest National Book Award longlist, declared our era a “golden age” of poetry. With the death of Richard Wilbur […]
November 9, 2017
She’s Full of Stars: For Olivia Gomez de la Garza Cisneros
I watched her point to the incense dish from which someone swept all the ashes up. Asking if she recognized us. Because that is what the living want: thinking it […]