Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 15,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.

Chard deNiord: Tree of Wisdom

I am taken in by its stand and breadth,
marveling at its brawn and reach of branches,
studying each leaf like the page of a sacred book,
embracing its trunk like a void.

March 26, 2023 · 6 Comments

Sydney Lea: A Monk After Dark

One boot sags like him in his cubicle’s corner.
He drops the other to the floor with a grimace.

March 21, 2023 · 1 Comment

David Kirby: My Girlfriend Killed James Brown

“Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who
my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,
and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three
weeks later, James Brown is dead.”

March 16, 2023 · 8 Comments

David Hassler: Intensive Care

Children under the age of fourteen weren’t allowed in the ICU. I was eleven, and my brother was thirteen, but no nurse or doctor was going to stop us from seeing our mother.

March 12, 2023 · 7 Comments

Robert Wrigley: Self-Pity

Sometimes, in private—another room at least,
another building all the better—you can bask
in the balm and rage of it, you can as a dog does
roll in it like a dead fish on the grass

March 5, 2023 · 18 Comments

Video: The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai

A rare glimpse inside a samurai sword workshop, where ritual meets mastery

March 5, 2023 · Leave a comment

Molly Fisk: Death, Herself

UNDRESS, SHE SAID by Doug Anderson, Four Way Books, Tribeca 2022, 102 pages, $17.95 . .             You might think, opening Doug Anderson’s fourth poetry collection Undress, She Said, that a man … Continue reading

March 3, 2023 · 10 Comments

Nneka M. Okona: The Imposition of Black Grief

For Black people in the United States, grief and loss are intertwined with our very being. Our ancestors knew the trauma of loss intimately…

March 2, 2023 · 4 Comments

Carolyn Miller: Rapture

When they said the world was coming to an end,
I thought about my brother, his long limbs,
his good shoulders and thick hair, his small
white teeth, his beautiful feet at the end
of the hospital bed.

February 26, 2023 · 9 Comments

Video: Vegan Poem

At the current turning point in our relationship with the earth, Federico García Lorca’s vision of the injustice in our mistreatment of animals is even more poignant.

February 25, 2023 · 5 Comments

Robinson Jeffers: The Treasure

That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it;
interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence

February 24, 2023 · 6 Comments

Video: Robert Wrigley reads ‘American Fear’

In this long poem about the present disfunction of American society, Robert Wrigley ‘tells all the truth, but makes it sing.’

February 19, 2023 · 11 Comments

Jonathan Kaplan: Why is a love poem full of sex in the Bible? Readers have been struggling with the Song of Songs for 2,000 years

Feminist readings have highlighted the female character’s power, autonomy and sensuality. Conservative Christians, meanwhile, often approach the poem as an ideal expression of acceptable love between a husband and wife.

February 12, 2023 · 7 Comments

Song of Songs, Canticles 1-8

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys[….]
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

February 12, 2023 · 14 Comments

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