Do you ever look back at when you first started writing—college or high school or even before that—and remember the joy that writing itself brought you? Do you remember how it felt […]
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Building Community in the Online Age
I began my writing career in an analog time. We got our news from Poets & Writers, the AWP Chronicle, and good (or bad) old-fashioned gossip. We wrote letters and put stamps […]
Thoughts About the Future
1. Will there be hummingbirds? 2. Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking in geological time, astronomical space. When humans die out on the planet we call Earth, what other species will be […]
Rewilding
One of the critiques of the environmental movement has been that it’s too much gloom and doom. The facts and statistics can be so depressing that people just turn off. It’s understandable […]
National Poetry Month 2021: One Poem to Love
…We’ll float,
you said. Afterward
we’ll float between two worlds—
five bronze beetles
stacked like spoons in one
peony blossom, drugged by lust:
if I came back as a bird
I’d remember that—
until everyone we love
is safe is what you said.
On Purpose: Work, Religion, and Community
I used to be a priest in the Church of Poetry. I had 60-80 parishioners per semester, mostly young people with varying dedication to Poetry. Some entered the classroom having only worshipped […]
Time to Redefine Ourselves
In a time unprecedented during the 50 plus years of my life, I am trying, again, to redefine myself. Or I am still trying to redefine myself, despite the pandemic and the […]
On Signs, and Politics, and Gardening
My husband and I live in Tennessee, on the edge of Memphis. One of our friends had a sign up in his yard, one of those that says, We believe: science is […]
The Best Things People Said to Me After My Sister Died
Ok, so my husband is the person who said–and says–most of these things to me. And no, people aren’t generally quite as specific or direct as this. But perhaps, if you know […]
VOTE
Vote for a woman. Vote for a person of color. Vote for a Democrat. Vote against fascism, corruption, cruelty, enriching the 1%, racism, sexism, science denying. Vote because your friends will be […]
The Gloria Sirens 