June 20, 2019
Repetition Is Political: On Walking Alone, “I Have a Dream,” and Morgan Parker
In 2016, I attended a weeknight concert at the Showbox in Downtown Seattle that got me thinking about walking as a political act. The headliner that night was riot grrrl […]
August 4, 2017
The How to Get Your Students to Love Poetry and Sociopolitical Issues Lesson Plan
Just as I can’t ride the subway without finding iambic pentameter and social commentary in even a foot pain ad, poetry and sociopolitical issues have made their often awkward, yet […]
June 15, 2017
How to Be an Artist
“Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly journals, regardless of the works’ attraction or merit. In the words of Citizens Against Government Waste, “actors, […]
April 6, 2017
On Political Poetry and William Stafford’s “At the Bomb Testing Site”
In our loud political times, I’ve been thinking of the quiet and powerful poems of William Stafford (1914-1993), whose work often engaged, even if obliquely, with political themes. His “At […]