Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Michael Simms: All Time Most Popular Posts in Vox Populi (2014-2025)
Vox Populi was founded on April 1, 2014 when Nisha Gupta and I met for coffee and decided to start a website to support the anti-fracking activists in Western Pennsylvania. After our friend Joseph Carreno designed the site, we started posting articles and interviews about the damage being done to the water and air of this region and what activists were doing to try to stop the destruction. Later, we decided to include poetry in order to make the website less wonky. Well, we lost the battle over fracking, but meanwhile the website had grown in popularity, so we continued posting. Nisha went on to do other things (teach, write, make art and films), but I continued the daily posts, adding to the mix of poetry and politics a selection of short films, vegan recipes, and personal essays. So far, over 8,000 items have appeared in VP. The daily blog has about 20,000 subscribers and a strong presence in social media, and VP publishes some of the best poets, writers and artists in the world. A third of our subscribers live outside the United States. Evidently, a carefully curated selection of poetry, art and political commentary from a progressive standpoint (a ‘gazette of the left’ as I like to call it) meets a need among readers. My favorite comment about Vox Populi comes from long-time contributor Doug Anderson: “Vox Populi is basically a personal blog that seems to have swallowed a small planet.”
Below is a list of our most popular posts over the last eleven years in the overlapping categories of Politics, Poetry, Personal Essays, Critical Essays, Humor and Satire, Health and Nutrition, and Art/Music/Film as well as additional links to a couple of my personal favorites in each category. Please let me know which posts are your favorites.
(By the way, subscriptions to VP are free. Simply go to the bottom of the page and type in your email address to start receiving daily posts.)
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Poetry
Danusha Laméris: Small Kindnesses
Video: Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads “Pity the Nation”
Zeina Azzam, Andy Young, David Adès: Three poems about Gaza
Editor’s Choices
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Tonight’s Dinner Companions
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Politics
Joshua Dubois: What the President secretly did at Sandy Hook Elementary School
Lawrence W. Britt: 14 Characteristics of Fascism
Noam Chomsky: The Death of the American University
Abby Zimet: Slipping Free of the Shame to Say His Name, Now More than Ever
George Lakoff: Trump Tweets, Press Leaps
Editor’s Choices:
Rebecca Gordon: I Had an Abortion and Now I’m Not Ashamed
George Yancy and Peter Singer: On Racism, Animal Rights, and Human Rights
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Personal Essays
John Samuel Tieman: Thank you for your service
Deesha Philyaw: I Am Not My Ancestors
Abe Louise Young: New Seeds for Old Stories
Editor’s Choices:
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Hermanas
Eva-Maria Simms: Muzot in Winter
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Critical Essays
Mary Oliver: The Artist’s Task
James Baldwin: The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity
Ursula K. Le Guin: On Power, Oppression and Freedom
Djelloul Marbrook: What is Poetry For
Dawn Potter: Speaking of Sorrow
Editor’s Choices:
Sharon F. McDermott: How to Love a Transcendentalist
Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller
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Humor and Satire
Banksy: Don’t Forget To Eat Your Lunch and Make Some Trouble
Video: The greatest glue commercial ever made
All-time best jokes about Donald Trump
James M. Kauffman: Why can’t I own a Canadian?
Editor’s Choice:
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Red and Speedy
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Health and Nutrition
Mary Swander: Covid-19 among the Amish
Billy Clem: As My Death Approaches
Christina Rossetti: The Plague
Michael Simms: On the Spectrum with Garrison Keillor
Editor’s Choices:
Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
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Art / Music / Film
Audio: Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music
Video: Claude Monet painting the lily pond
Video: “The Ballad of the Skeletons” by Allen Ginsberg with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass
Video: Marconi Union and Lyz Cooper perform “Weightless”
Editor’s Choices:
Hans Runesson: Woman hitting neo-Nazi with her handbag, 1985
Bill Knott: Our Farewells Lack the Plausibility of our Departures (Three paintings)
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Copyright 2025 Michael Simms
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THANKS, MICHAEL! THIS IS A KEEPER. LOT’S TO CATCH UP ON🤗
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Thank you for everything you do!
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It was a surprise and a pleasure to discover Vox Populi, Michael. Thanks so much for continuing to inform and inspire so many of us.
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Thanks, Mandy. I love your comments on the poems and essays.
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How wonderful! ❤️Thank you for all you do!Sent from my iPhone
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thanks, Donna!
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A treasure chest, no a golden hoard and a wonderful gift. Thank you again and again.
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Thanks, Luray!
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I feel like I’ve just opened a magic treasure chest! So many gems, some of which I’ve read but many more to explore. What an incredible gift you have created Michael. A deep bow of thanks to you and all the writers from your grateful reader.
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Thanks, Jan. I really appreciate your steadfast devotion to VP through all the tech problems you experienced!
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Thanks Michael, and I still can’t receive VP on my new email even though your comments come through to me, so I keep a window open on my laptop and check in often – that’s how much I value your posts!! 🙂
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Novelist E M Forster said Only Connect, it’s his epitaph. Well, you help us connect in so many ways, but do much more. Keep the Vox Populi dialogue going, Michael, while staying true to yourself, in our flabbergasted culture.
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Thanks, Jim!
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How would I get through these no good, very bad days if I couldn’t start them with Vox Populi? I am in debt to Michael who had the confidence in me to post my work when I lacked the confidence in myself.
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You have a beautiful soul, Barbara.
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Fun to see these lists and especially poetry and criticism and so glad to see Michael T Young’s essay in this list, and those poets–wonders! Thank you Michael for doing this work every day, and it helps me start my day like coffee too!
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Thanks, Mary. Love your poems! — M
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Thank you, dear Michael!
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Great post. So many good pieces to read.
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Thanks for being one of us, Stephanie! — M.
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So glad you started this site and had the commitment and stamina and passion to continue with it. Your voice and your contributors voices are so important in today’s world. (Oh, and so glad I discovered it a while back!)
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Thanks, Rose Mary! M
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We owe you so much, dear Michael, and have such gratitude for your tireless, indefatigable support of us, lucky & grateful bunch of writers and readers. There, **e-v-e-r-y d-a-y** to remind us of what matters. Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a community you created!
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Thank you for your kindness and generosity, Laure-Anne. As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe you are the best lyric poet in America. If this were Europe, there would be statues of you in the plaza, and your birthday would be a national holiday. School children would sing your poems, and eclairs would be named for you and consumed in ecstasy. Someday, maybe.
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Just flagged this e-mail, so that I will be able to find it again: I am a relative newcomer to Vox Populi, and that means quite a few of these are from “before my time” as a daily reader. Now I have a new landscape of fascinating and provocative prose I can explore (in my copious spare time) and a little treasure chest of poems I can dip into when needed. Thanks, Michael!
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Thanks for being part of our community, Annie. I appreciate your comments.
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Thanks for this list. I need to catch up!
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I just realized that ‘Kim’ rhymes with ‘gem’. How appropriate!
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VP is as essential to the start of my day as coffee, and it wakes me in a similar way. I’m deeply grateful for it.
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Thanks, Richard. I love your work!
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Thank you for Vox Pop. Once in a while I realize how much it takes to produce it: reading so much to sift what you’ll include, finding appropriate images to match, brute TYPING….Thank you again.
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Thanks for all you do as well, Arlene!
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I love every one of these posts. Thank you, poets, writers and filmmakers!
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Thank you, Michael, for your unflagging support of all of us.
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Thanks, Mike!
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