Author’s Note: “When I wrote “Debris” I was working on a series of poems about things we leave behind. When I started to research space junk, I was taken by the notion of something so small being capable of immense damage. The poem took off from 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: “ ‘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: “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: “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]
Author’s Note: “This poem grows out of my fascination with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a couple of unparalleled greatness. Franklin, a paraplegic ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “We live in a migratory center for several of nature’s long-distance flyers, most famously the monarch butterfly, the subject of an earlier poem of mine. In 2016, I read a newspaper article about the Godwit, a bird that travels almost non-stop to South America after hatching in Canada’s Hudson Bay and visiting our shores for food and rest. No one knows how it does this. As a retired brain surgeon, poet and forty-year Chesapeake sailor, I was naturally drawn to the Godwit as a poetic subject.”... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The occasion for this poem was attending a friend’s 50th birthday party and seeing his younger brother for the first time in 30-plus years. That small shockwave of recognition and surprise at his aging sent me heading down this poetic rabbit hole, where I found myself wanting to hold the moment briefly, then accelerate time at warp speed — as a reminder (mostly to myself) of this precious continuum that links us all.” ... [Continue Story]
