Rachel Hadas: The Seeds
My former student sent me six or seven
little homemade packets—folded paper
labelled and taped. Inside each packet
she’d tucked a few heritage seeds:
squash, lettuce, kale, peas, more I am forgetting.
Rachel Hadas: Sourdough Starter
One batch of sourdough starter, it is said,
can trace its lineage generations back.
Each fresh loaf carries on the tangy smack…
Rachel Hadas: Ides of March MMXX
But who
could hear me through my mask?
Don’t ask.
Love
wears a glove.
Rachel Hadas: ‘Laugh right in its face’ – a poet reflects on her craft’s defiant role in the middle of a war
Poets write poetry to help them come to terms with the terror of their times. The process of writing those poems, and the process of reading them, both offer respite.
Rachel Hadas: February 29, 2020
That extra day, that ordinary day,
I got where I was going on the train
and taught the lyric leap, as per the plan;
then, tired, happy, bathed in poetry,
caught a train and travelled back again
Rachel Hadas: Smoke
Smoke from a massive fire was blowing across the river
into the city: lobbies of apartment buildings,
inner rooms of doctors’ offices.
Rachel Hadas: Ghost guest
I sometimes think I recognize the face
of my own death. Knowing it is nearer
makes me feel it ought to be familiar,
a neutral guest I’ve seen somewhere before.
Rachel Hadas: Fire Pit
Gathered, we watched flames
flickering and drawing us together.
It was hard to pull our eyes away.
Rachel Hadas: Humble Herb is Rival to Prozac
The little notebook, its pages an eye-ease greenish tint, with my staggering penciled captions labeling every blessed thing, each flower picked and pressed and taped down to the page, contains more than specimens of wildflowers from a Vermont meadow. It encloses the first summer I remember.
Rachel Hadas: What do the classics teach us about hope?
How do we weather this welter of bad news? How do we adapt?
Rachel Hadas: Lessons of Poetry
It is easier to lecture about the time and place of a book, the culture that produced it, the special historical or linguistic problems involved in it. It is harder…to face the book as a masterpiece and to help the student understand why it is a masterpiece….
Deborah DeNicola: The Death of Socrates
Even the guards listened in
as he taught his eternal lesson,
how to live like a moral human. Politics
back then—as now—rampant, wretched corruption,
a den of sociopaths in sheep’s clothing.
Rachel Hadas: Lyric Leap
lacuna, hiatus, sidebar,
sudden swerve, and you are far
along already toward surprise.
Rachel Hadas: Fingernails
Vanessa Redgrave thought whatever
separates life and death
is tiny as the sliver of a fingernail.
Vox Populi 