Author’s Note: “Dostoevsky, Rubenstein, Mussorgsky—Russia’s titans of literature, music & art—have lain in repose in an antique cemetery in Saint Petersburg since the 19th century. Visitors stroll through, ooh-ing & ahh-ing over the elaborate statuary, and they snap a few pix, but nobody cries. It takes a person with fresh grief to shed tears there... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Wend is a sijo, a traditional Korean syllabic verse form that emerged in the Goryeo period (918 – 1392) and is still popular today. Themes range from the bucolic to the metaphysical. The standard pattern is three lines (each broken into two half lines) that average 14–16 syllables, for a total of 42–48: theme (3, 4, 4, 4); elaboration (3, 4, 4, 4); counter-theme (3, 5) and completion (4 ,3).” [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The rooms we inhabit often inhabit us in ways we may not even realize. ‘Never Room’ is a poem about coping with miscarriage in which place and memory intersect. It tries to capture a moment on the trajectory of loss that also hints at future loss in the form of divorce. I tend... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “I live just across a cove from the Delaware City Refinery, so it’s often in my thoughts. It’s been bought and sold several times during its sixty-four years; and in 2009 it was shut down. A buyer was eventually found, and it reopened two years later. I kept thinking about those two years, ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “After a retinal tear took me dangerously close to blindness in my right eye, I was instructed to see an ophthalmologist twice a year to ensure the surgical repair that saved my sight ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “ ‘Stone Sijo’ is my attempt to highlight the materiality of language by using only monosyllabic words. I think of each word as a stone, and the poem itself as an edifice constructed of carefully-placed stones. Sound is foregrounded. The stanza form is that of a sijo, but I linked five of them... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Departures” explores the leave-taking that people often confront in their life journey, be it career-related, a redefining of one’s self or of a relationship, or a trading of the past and present for some hoped-for future. In this story, one man on the cusp of retirement has his notions of self, of happiness, and of what constitutes fulfillment shaken to the core. He finally experiences transcendence, once when he rediscovers compassion and again when he frees himself from the constraints that kept him focused on the ground beneath him instead of on the stars above... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This poem suggests that though beauty has its own power and is flush with pleasure, it is held in check and made to suffer by the superseding strength of a brutal and jealous god. ... [Continue Story]
Author’s note: “I’ve always been fascinated by forces of nature whether water, wind, or fire. Much of my work is centered around some aspect of nature. A sunrise or sunset enthralls me; the thought of an earth without wild animals is unconscionable. This essay arose from a desire to present various truths about fire, and that resulted in these ten short sections. The style is hybrid, for readability.”
“This was written before the West Coast fires, and though fire will always be a serious issue, I was looking at it from a distant perspective as a varied, though important, topic.”
The Fire Anthology
I TAKE IT THIS IS YOUR FIRST TRIP THROUGH A FIRE. It’s what some would call peppery... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This poem—a pantoum—has two sources: my first experience of love and marriage, and the remarkable Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady, which gave me courage and language to speak ... [Continue Story]
