Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Hat
That first day I noticed the handsome stranger, I was wearing a skirt and heels, walking delicately down the cracked sidewalks of Shady Avenue. This dressing-up for work was new to me.
Sharon F. McDermott: How to Love a Transcendentalist
Walking across the quad, on my way to my first class, my senses swooned at the sight and scent of blossoms capping the apple trees with billowing clouds. Pink and white petals perfumed the air and spiraled down on breezy days. Bees hummed in the canopies; birds nested there.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: I Dream of Kevin Bacon Playing Guitar to his Goats
and I ask him “why you, Kevin Bacon, why
are you in my dream? I’ve not even
watched Footloose all the way through.”
White Whale Bookstore event: Saturday April 6, 7pmET
We are so excited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Vox Populi, a curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. The site was started by Pittsburgh poet Michael Simms as a way to connect with his peers in letters, and what better way to ring in ten years than with other Pittsburgh poets, on a date that also coincides with Michael’s 70th birthday!
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Grateful
And now it’s summer and the word for that is ‘strawberry,”
its bright green cap and freckled fruit.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: On Time Passing
I wander through the rusting bulk
of Carrie Furnace and reach toward the ghosts of
Eastern European men who worked with fire
and molten ore for pennies a day to build the Empire
Sharon Fagan McDermott | Fragments: An Ars Poetica
within the word “ventriloquist,”
there’s “trout” and “rust” and “silver”
Sharon Fagan McDermott: War
This intensity, this buildup
of noise—Help us! —an echo of an old human
refrain through the mad and fucked up timbres
of our human history.
Virtual Book Launch! “Nightjar” by Michael Simms, w/ Gerry LaFemina, Gail Langstroth, and Sharon Fagan McDermott — Today!
Poet and classical scholar Rachel Hadas notes that the poems “recall the darkly vatic voice of Brecht’s late lyrics. Yet, Simms always sounds like himself: plainspoken, intimate, vulnerable, courageous.”
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Three Ways of Looking at Beauty
When the hypnotherapist brought me out of my trance, I wondered about this deer, about my new vision of beauty—why had it changed? Something fundamental in me had shifted and reconstructed itself.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Summer’s End
The sudden slip of moon that turns the sun
into a wreath of fire. We’re waiting for that moment
during the eclipse when—at once—all the birds stop singing
Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Summer of Nectarines
Plague on the winds, in the air,
on our tongues in the midst of old conversations.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: On Memory and Writing
In one of my favorite memories, I am peeking through my fingers, shivering, as New York Harbor, the heliport, the bustling-streets of New York City, and–even the skyscrapers— plummet away … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Parli Italiano
Language is a song of loose coins, spilling down
from the fountains. Then bells of the Duomo ring
out over Firenze.
