First, I've got a new poem up a Vox Populi, a sad politically tinged sonnet titled "Confused Prayer."
Second, the CavanKerry Press blog has reprinted Teresa Carson's discussion of my pandemic-response poem "Concord Street Hymn," along with some thoughts about the difficulties of writing during this time.
Third, Hole in the Head Review has published two new poems--"August" and "Preface to Paradise Lost"-- along with the work of several of my dear poet-friends, including Baron Wormser and Betsy Sholl.
Fourth, the poet Kerrin McCadden, who is also the associate director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, has written an impassioned editorial about why schools should not be reopening this fall. It's important, and it should be shared widely.
6 comments:
The poems are fantastic. My favorite lines:
"Faith is a tattered blanket"
"because this
is the kind of family we are, always eager to acquire the unusable."
"the stars they bit holes into the night sky"
". . . I would have to tell him
that the only reason I took his book off the shelf is because my son
says he wants to use it as the title for a Spotify playlist and I cannot
believe that this would make the creator of Aslan happy."
p.s. The link to the discussion is https://cavankerrypress.org/blog/
Thanks for fixing my link mistake!
It's a really great discussion and is perfect for stealing for classroom use : )
p.s. Kerrin's letter has already made the rounds of all of VT NEA members : )
We just got 12 pages of protocols. Makes my stomach hurt just to look at them, much less read them. It feels like all the things that made my classrooom "mine" now has a rule forbidding them!
Thanks yet again, Dawn -- yet another of your very special "confused prayers." Indeed, that could be the definition for the sort of lyric poetry I live with best -- fun, clever, intensely moving, tragic yet erotic.
"Soul's girth swelling" ../.. "soldering"
"God's waiting room/fouled with jeers."
Where I live the "cowbells" are made out of 3" bamboo tocks with external wooden clappers tied with frayed bits of rope around massive water-buffalo necks. Each "bell" makes its own unique, very soft appeal, and just says "Companionship." So they're never lost, and we aren't either.
The only time the "bells" are silent is when the buffalo are up to their eyes in their favorite mudholes, which is most of the time.
In other words, "Brown doves crooning in a quiet wood."
C.
Thank you, Nancy and Christopher-- Writing has been very difficult for me lately, and each poem that does manage to emerge feels like a wound. So it's a relief to know that lines resonate. Love to you both.
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