January 3, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – January
“Education is not the filling of a pail,” reads the sign above my colleague’s desk, “but the lighting of a fire.” These lines—often attributed to the poet W. B. Yeats—happen […]
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 […]
January 15, 2017
An Open Letter from the Only Poet on the Professor Watchlist
Dear Charlie Kirk, Founder of Turning Point USA: It’s not every day that an American poet can address someone who thinks he is dangerous. For that alone I should thank […]
January 1, 2016
The Year Twenty Fixteen
When my daughter counts, she recites all the numbers in order, until she reaches “12, 13, 14, Fixteen, 17, 18, 19….” Soon enough, I’m sure she’ll separate fifteen and sixteen […]
December 27, 2011
Metaeuphoria: In Praise of Metaphor
Of course, you have been thinking since that last post, well of course you can “believe” these myths and Gods after you reduce them to symbols and metaphors. Your “belief” […]