Jose Padua: Notes from a Poem Rewritten while Listening to Prince
The first protest I ever attended was on a beautiful spring day and I was asked to leave. because I wasn’t animated enough for a spring day or for a … Continue reading
Michelle Boncek Evory: Confessions of an Angry Adjunct
With President Obama’s new community college initiative, which foresees the potential to offer 9 million students free tuition for two years, it surprises me that no one is talking about … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: In Praise of the Sentence
What do cocktail party talk and poetry have in common? Like Barbara Hamby at the end of her gorgeous “Millennium Rave,” I come to praise the sentence in poetry “in … Continue reading
Alice Friman: What Is This Thing Called ‘Voice’?
To my way of thinking, your poetry matches who you are. Not just in the subject matter you choose or that chooses you, or even in the words you select, … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: The Party Of ‘No!’
If Democrats want an emotionally charged, yet meaningful bumper sticker for the 2016 election, I suggest, “Republican = Anarchy + Nihilism.” I am not anti-Republican. Nor am I anti-conservative. I … Continue reading
Jose Padua: A Simple Declaration of my Personal Philosophy
Efficiency is the enemy of art, purity the death of the soul. Curses are rarely stranded at the tip of my tongue, and the blades I work with are dull … Continue reading
Video: Alan Watts — Can we change the world?
In this 1971 video, philosopher Alan Watts talks about the problem with trying to change the world. — Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: An Ode to the Erection
I sing, for my daughter, of shanks and shafts and the endearing contrast between the mind’s affairs and the body’s undiscriminating inclinations.
Jose Padua: The Color of Bourbon and Other Observations on the Landscape of the Valley Where We Live
. This past Saturday, Heather, Maggie, Julien, and I were going south on Route 11 just outside of downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia. We were there for a quick, cheap, winter getaway … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Sailing with Marcus Aurelius on an Ash Wind
Something is exquisitely compatible about sailing and Marcus Aurelius’s admonition to perform each act as if it were your last. The Stoic emperor of Rome is one of the few … Continue reading
Paula Marie Coomer: Why Vegan?
My husband Phil and I chose to go vegan in 2012 after two years of vegetarianism and after viewing a film called Forks over Knives. This documentary made famous The … Continue reading
Andy Piascik: Helen Keller the Radical
Travel north from Bridgeport through Fairfield to Sport Hill Road in the small, upscale town of Easton, Connecticut and you eventually come to Helen Keller Middle School. Go west a … Continue reading
Jane Lazarre: Once White in America — Raising Black Sons in a White Country
For Adam and Khary Black bodies swingin’ in the summer breeze strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees It was 1969 and 1973, both times in early fall, when I … Continue reading
Republicans and Fear
Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
? PFC Jones with Mine-Detector. Want to talk about fear? W.J. Astore Why, looky here, another article in the New York Times that examines…