In his poem Around Here, Jones Irwin captures a sense of the current political atmosphere, a specific kind of decline in marginal communities but also how they can be energized by political ideas.
Category: Poetry
Muriel Rukeyser – Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)
Muriel Rukeyser's poem about how we stay connected to one another, making love and awakening, through the noise of and distraction of politics and war.
Han Shan – A Bug Crawling in a Bowl
Han Shan's poems are rooted in the quiet nature of the Cold Mountain and the poet's effusive humor that reminds us of the worthlessness of worldly pursuits.
Dilruba Ahmed – Phase One
Dilruba Ahmed's poem invokes forgiveness of ourselves and others like a cleansing rain 'relieved of cruelty and petty meanness.'
Taylor Mallay – New Life
Wounds, injury, cuts and abrasions slice through Taylor Mallay's poem New Life as the mystery of healing takes place, stretching skin thin and craving water like succulent plants yellowing on the windowsill.
Rebecca Elson – Antidotes to Fear of Death
Rebecca Elson was an astronomer whose poetry expressed the wonder she felt for her own existence and for the universe she had spent her life studying.
Margaret Bleichman – upon waking
'upon waking' describes a hand-washing ritual performed after waking up in the morning, accompanied by a traditional Jewish blessing, al netilat yadayim.
Audre Lorde – A Litany for Survival
Audre Lorde's 'A Litany for Survival' is a prayer for the marginalized, those living on the shoreline or on the 'constant edges of decision', whose forbidden loves occur in hidden places and times.
Amanda Smith-Hatch – Redemption
Amanda Smith-Hatch's Redemption is an attempt to capture the profundity hidden within a seemingly banal moment in time.
Mary Oliver – Wild Geese
Wild Geese runs like an exhalation, beginning with a lifting of the weight of religious culpability - in the prairies and the deep trees, there is no onus to be good nor to string oneself out in repentance.