April 24, 2017
Positive Negation: Saying No in Poetry
The old creative writing class imperative to “write what you know” may have its place, but lately I’ve been thinking of the power of poetry not to “know,” but to […]
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 […]
November 11, 2016
“We need to know how to go about reaching the next days of our lives”
Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” is going around again. W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” is circling through social media, as it did after September 11. Why do we turn to poems […]
February 5, 2016
The Sultan of Nonsense
Last week, on this blog, I asked a question that I didn’t try to answer: “Where is the great nonsense of our time?” Might it be found in the lines […]