Rachel Hadas: Ancient Greece had extreme polarization and civil strife too – how Thucydides can help us understand Jan. 6 and its aftermath
The insights and objectivity of a historian who lived nearly 2,500 years ago can bolster our understanding of the country’s current plight.
Rachel Hadas: Hypocrisy is beneath them – political figures in the Trump era don’t bother concealing their misdeeds
There seems to be no sense of shame or its cousin, guilt, in our time.
Umit Singh Dhuga: Three poems
We were huddled by the Campbell House bar
on the penultimate Monday of July
downing pint after pint of tepid water.
My first reading sober, your last one alive.
Rachel Hadas: That Patch of Warmth
August. Midday. Look up: flawless sky
until a cloud sprouts; sidles; suddenly
blots out the sun. Wind troubles the trees
Rachel Hadas: Little Free Library, Turner’s Falls
Crones do not whine: agreed.
But pain’s a constant, and the need
to let it out, give it a name
shouldn’t be a source of shame.
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.
Vox Populi 