Nothing to say except that I’m afraid: Sarah Palin

Who is Sarah Palin? Who is the woman that McCain thinks we should trust to be one heartbeat away from the White House? Here’s some basic background:
She was elected Alaska’s governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no [...]

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Concordance (Working Backward in Sleep) by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Concordance (Working Backward in Sleep)
by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Working backward in sleep, the
last thing you numbed to is what
wakes you.
What if that image were Eros as
words?
What would it be like if you
contemplated my words and I felt
you?
Animals, an owl, frog, open their
eyes, and a mirror forms on the
ground.
When insight comes in a dream,
and events the next day
illuminate [...]

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Student Commonplace Site

From my mother–again and again throughout my childhood
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
I’m still learning to maneuver my way around wordpress, and as classes near, I wanted to streamline the process of checking my students’ required commonplace books. So I created a site just for the students.
Visit Creative Writing [...]

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For the Executive Director of the Fallen

For the Executive Director of the Fallen
by Tom Sleigh
In memoriam Liam Rector
The little boy crying out
Weenie Weenie
in self-panicking delight,
waving his little cock
under the banner
of the sun, seemed pure Blake,
all anarchy and energy,
an innocence unfrightened
of itself that shook the lake’s
waters and unsettled
the strained composures
and appointed certainties
of whatever Absolute Speaker
had been ranting in my brain:
Peace Through Strength
Justice [...]

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Poor Boy Long Way From Home–In Memory of Liam Rector

(Painting by Curt Pilgrim)
Cheers, Big Dog. As always, in awe…………

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In Memory: Mahmoud Darwish

Poet Mahmoud Darwish dies at 67
Mahmoud Darwish, the world’s most recognized Palestinian poet, whose prose gave voice to the Palestinian experience of exile, occupation and infighting, died yesterday in Houston, Texas. He was 67. He died following open heart surgery.
Born to a Muslim family in historical Palestine, he emerged as a Palestinian cultural icon who [...]

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Dig For Something Shiny

I’m requiring my students to keep online commonplace books. And I try to practice what I preach
So….visit Something Shiny: One Writer’s Commonplace Book.

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Still so much to conquer: E. Ethelbert Miller

Wisdom from an interview with my friend, the poet E. Ethelbert Miller:
Just when I needed reminding…
Thanks, E, and much love, much gratitude.

“But where’s the apprenticeship? And that’s the word to use: apprenticeship. Not model, not workshop, apprenticeship. The difference between an apprenticeship and a workshop is that I will sit here and take only one [...]

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A Blessing by James Wright

A Blessing
by James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they [...]

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“Yet the collective life, which is also us, shimmers on.” Mark Doty

“All attempts to console ourselves, I believe, are doomed, because the world is more complicated than we are. Our explanations will fail, but it is our human work to make them.”
from “Souls on Ice” by Mark Doty
I just completed an essay, about my father. It is a draft, so incredibly far from finished, more incredibly [...]

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