Dan Turello: Craft your own renaissance with tips from Boccaccio’s Decameron
A few years ago, on a crisp winter afternoon, I found a beautiful bound translation of The Decameron at the Black Swan bookstore in Staunton, Virginia….I bought it immediately and took it back to a friend’s cabin where a group of us had gathered for the weekend.
Amy M. Alvarez, Jameka Harley: How Black poets and writers gave a voice to ‘Affrilachia’
A turning point took place 30 years ago, when Black Appalachian culture experienced a renaissance centered around a single word: “Affrilachia.”
Joel Christensen: What Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ can teach us about reentering the world after a year of isolation
Homer can help guide us as we return back to our normal worlds after a year of minimizing social contact. He can also, I believe, offer guidance on how people can heal.
Chard deNiord: “We Will Not Give Up on Each Other”: A Conversation with Major Jackson
We are living in an age of absurdity, but I am casting for wider seas.
Jason Irwin: A Stillness Nearly Mineral | The poetry of Robert Gibb
A stillness which is very nearly mineral
Keeps insisting upon the essential
Loneliness with which this light is filled.
Video: Mary Beard | Women in Power
The Western world’s demonization of women in power can be traced back to Ancient Greece, argues the celebrated UK classicist Mary Beard.
Yana Djin: The Dead Don’t Die | The Poetry of Dmitry Melnikoff
And they lie at the edge of light alone
at the place where snow never hits
Kahlo embraces Diego’s barebone
and they emanate heat.
Rachel Hadas: Holding on to hope is hard, even with the pandemic’s end in sight – wisdom from poets through the ages
As we begin to glimpse what might be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, what does hope mean? It’s hard not to sense the presence of hope, but how do we think of it?
Michael Simms: The Trojan Women
The slaves in the dark hold of the ship cannot climb out or go back to where things went wrong. There’s no light, no voice of comfort, just chaos and darkness where they have to find their own peace without the kindness of others.
Tara Lohan: Extinction Is Erasing the Earth’s Music
People often ask me, “What can one person do?” And I say, “Stop being one person.”
Angele Ellis: “Subterranean Lovesick Clues” | Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Poetic Topography of Sex
Emotions wrestle with physicality in the twisted sheets of Erotic.
Abby Zimet: Rest In Poetry
We bid fond farewell to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, indefatigable poet, publisher, painter, pacifist, iconoclast, political activist, “heart of the Beat generation” and “legend of American letters, bookselling, rabble rousing, wild dreaming.”
Arlene Weiner: Nobody’s coming to save the children
Catherine Doty’s pitiless poems beautifully show us what we don’t want to see: children’s poverty, abuse, neglect. And their meanness. Poor children living in squalor, which Doty’s language often veils in lyrical glamor.
Ariel Dorfman: How Spanish Can Help Us Survive Viral Times
A Journey into the Heart of a Language We Need Now More Than Ever.
