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Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer

By Peggy RosenthalMay 10, 2017

What would you think of a biography of a famous person written in the form of a poem? I don’t mean just a portrait of the person: Stephanie Strickland did this (masterfully) in her The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil. No, I mean a full, chronological biography—birth to death and reputation beyond—complete with…

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Dancing with Words During National Poetry Month

By Richard ChessApril 10, 2017

Here’s your assignment. Choose a poem you’ve written (it could be any piece of writing, really, an email message, a shopping list, a complaint to a cable service provider, a toast for a wedding—you get the idea. If it’s a poem, chose only a few lines. If it’s another piece of writing, choose a portion…

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Love Nailed to the Doorpost

By Richard ChessMarch 23, 2017

The commandment to love is nailed to my doorpost. Ritualistically written on a little piece of parchment, rolled up, tucked inside a beautifully painted ceramic case, and nailed aslant to the doorpost. I almost never notice it. Not when I’m rushing out of the house in the morning, book bag and gym bag slung over…

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Poetry Friday: “In Tandem”

By Fred MarchantMarch 17, 2017

Here is a poem that takes aim at our clichés about aging and death. It does so with subtle cleverness, by putting “in tandem” an old spruce tree and the nursing home resident to whom the poem is addressed. Though there’s no stanza break, the poem divides into two parts, each of nine lines. The…

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Poetry Friday: “Grief Daybook: A Love Supreme”

By Carol Ann DavisMarch 10, 2017

It’s fairly common for a poem to be inspired by (or be in conversation with) a famous painting. Less often, though, do we find poems engaging with a musical work. Yet that’s just what happens in Carol Davis’s poem “Grief Daybook: A Love Supreme.” Fans of the brilliant jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane will…

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Kathleen Wakefield’s Invisible Stenographer

By Peggy RosenthalDecember 20, 2016

You’ve got to meet this character. She’s a stenographer by trade: From the outset she was the obsessive type, maker of lists: dates, births and deaths, diagnoses, times of arrival and departure, the amassing of coins, weapons and works of art, portions of letters, speeches and grocery lists, though soon it was statements of motivation,…

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Twitter #Micropoetry

By Peggy RosenthalNovember 3, 2016

Tootling around on Twitter, I’ve come upon a delightful community of poets. Their hashtag is #micropoetry. What these writers have realized is that Twitter’s restriction of 140 characters can be a stimulating challenge to finding just the right words to express concisely an impression, an experience, a thought. Much micropoetry on Twitter seems to be…

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The Best Words: Selections from the Sex Tapes of Tremendous Male Poets

By Brad FruhauffNovember 2, 2016

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!    —Theodore Roethke, “I Knew a Woman” I know a woman who feels injustice in her lungs. A therapist, all…

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