Audio: Wendell Berry reads ‘The Peace of Wild Things’
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be…
Dawn Potter: Confused Prayer
Faith is a tattered blanket in this age
of fear: a drape of old skin, soul’s girth
swelling with sugar-song, a late-stage
hymn soldering heaven to earth
Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Parisian Dream” by Charles Baudelaire
And, proud of what my art had done,
I viewed my painting, knew the great
Intoxicating monotone
Of marble, water, steel and slate.
Doug Anderson: My mind is weighted toward sorrow
My mind is weighted toward sorrow
and I feel unbalanced when I walk.
There are old rooms there, certainly,
that I’ve now abandoned, with their coffee spills
and unmade beds…
Sandy Solomon: Lost, Departed, Late
In the Serengeti four elephants rest without heads,
bodies rising like boulders from the plain…
José Alcantara: Countertop
The granite comes all the way from India,
but when I look closely, I see nebulae.
Lauren Camp: Leather World, This Bird, This Sky
I came here from temporary
and perpetual rages—the whole sky
of wind. Secret birds
take the ruin of garden.
Video: Rouba’s Manifesto
“If you want to change the world, make your life about others. And everything will come back to you.” — Dr. Rouba Mhaissen
Allen Ginsberg: Sunflower Sutra
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
Miriam Levine: Surfer at Wellfleet
It’s freezing
in the afterglow when he finally rises on his one long ride home.
Michael Simms: Praise the Poet
Empires fall and buildings crumble, but songs and stories survive.
Mike Schneider: Rain-Father of Narcissism & the Inner Tyrant
Remembering Tony Hoagland (1953-2018)
Gary Margolis: I was Living in a Poem
Lines so plain I didn’t know, at first,
I was living in a poem.
Joan E. Bauer: Get Your Kicks
This August my niece Holly will drive
the Mother Road. She’s a writer & I say:
Don’t miss anything: not cornfields, chili fries,
maple syrup farms, not the Big Texan
Steak House in dusty Amarillo…
