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May the river/ remember you
“In Berlin, you can’t go anywhere without seeing stones and markers dedicated to the Jewish and Roma residents who were forced from their homes and taken to the concentration camps,” Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer, says in “A Lynching’s Long Shadow” by Vanessa Gregory. “And that iconography creates a consciousness of what happened that…
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That’s why they call it a practice (NaPoWriMo Day 29)
Threads Meditation pisses me off. All that non-striving time on the floor, therapist-prescribed, noticing the rope of my breath swinging up and down, ringing me like a shivered bell, adds up to another chore I must perform and I have a lot of them— twisted muscles to lengthen, children who need the brushed-hand of a…
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News flash: in April, poet feels moody
Spring’s been happening in fits and starts–blossoms one minute, wind-strewn petals the next. I walk a nearby trail most mornings, and on Tuesday, Woods Creek churned and roared from heavy rains; parts of the path were massive puddles, and the lowest bridge was half-underwater. The next day was frigid; others have been balmy and still.…
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How poetry approaches music (and dances away again)
That’s the little magnolia in our side yard, intensely pink but browned from last night’s ice. A very intense winter term is just ending, one that included lots of grief and good news for the people around me, and that struggling tree, planted by the previous owners, seems a reasonably good emblem for it all.…
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Poetry and presence
Tess Taylor just gave a great reading here, and either there or during my class afterwards, she described poetry as “a dance with absence.” I know what she means–all that white space, evocation, closing in on loss and other big subjects through image and fragment–but when I’m finding my way towards a poem I tend…
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Occasional poem on coeducation
One of my students is currently researching coeducation at Washington and Lee, a guy whose father graduated in W&L’s last all-male class (’88) and whose mother studied here for a semester after women were finally admitted (class of ’89). He’s writing a series of poems based on interviews, newspaper articles, and even obnoxious graffiti from…
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It’s red, reflecting all our sunsets
Prompt: next time you’re at a meeting or professional event, write down the weirdest things your colleagues say. Using one of those phrases as a title, without permission, close the door or at least conceal your screen and write a poem when you should be working. A couple of years ago–maybe it was during a…
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Heard at AWP 2018
The meaning of life: I don’t know and I don’t care. Bells don’t ask questions…When you’re old you have fewer questions about the nitty-gritty of poems. There are bigger fish to fry. Dying fish. -Mary Ruefle in “Hell’s Bells,” a talk on tone You cannot trust the sea. …
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Small amid the sparkle
Is that a cormorant on that piling near St. Augustine, Florida, drying its wings? Because all the poets at the AWP convention in Tampa the week after next will look comparably, awkwardly exhibitionistic. Yo! I’m not totally unimposing! Come buy my book! Including me, of course. I’ll be carrying around copies of my new chapbook, Propagation, for…
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LESLEY WHEELER 