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 6, 2017
Painting the Since [Then]
This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond – Invisible, as Music – But positive, as Sound – It beckons, and it baffles – —Emily Dickinson, “This World is not […]
March 1, 2017
“They Leave Everything”: A Meditation on Robert Lowell’s 100th Birthday
This year marks the centennial of Robert Lowell’s birth, and not for that reason alone the time seems right to look again at one of his poems. While much of […]
February 24, 2017
The Game
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster…when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” – […]
February 23, 2017
On Difficult Loves
February 22, 2017
Goon I Feel You
How such gentle names belie the bodies checked into boards. Like in another context you could say: Here maple leafs fall among islanders, and think I’m talking about vacationing […]
February 16, 2017
I’ll Never Forget Her Name: On Private Selves in Public Spaces
Let me begin by stating this is not a post-AWP-reflections essay. Or maybe it is exactly that. I was talking to a poet who did not think herself a poet, […]
January 30, 2017
On Carrying Each Other & Cosmic Debt
The world is gone, I must carry you. —Paul Celan If my father was not the kind of person he is, it would be a touchy subject. It bears […]
January 26, 2017
Derechim: Writing as traveler’s prayer
Years ago, one of my first would-be mentors told me that he was never writing again. That the sum total of rejection, the pressure to keep sending work out […]
January 23, 2017
Gam Zu L’tova (This too Is for the Good)
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible […]
January 8, 2017
Happy 100th Birthday, Peter Taylor
It is customary on a writer’s birthday, especially on a date so significant as his 100th, to grant his life and work a few moments of your attention. Today we […]
December 31, 2016
Rituals of Hope: On New Year’s Resolutions
I never make resolutions on January 1 because for me, Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year, a time in which I enter a quiet, reflective solitude. But […]