“Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you / Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here…” –David Wagoner That is how our featured poem begins in this “Poems In A Pandemic” video #2. It is radical to imagine that it’s we, not nature, that is lost. If this pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s…
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This handpicked poem is the first in a series offered in these difficult times of pain, as well as courage and heroism. The poem “Keeping Quiet” is by Pablo Neruda, translation by Alastair Reid. I knew it was the right kick-off poem when several dear friends sent it to me in the same week. Enjoy…
I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem –Jamie Gil de Biedma Before I “tell” anything here, let me first “ask” some things. How are you holding up? How are those you care for and love? In the grip of this world epidemic and health…
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Have you ever wondered why certain kinds of exhaustion are so persistent? Especially the kind laced with burnout and even a bit of despair. This type of weariness can be highly resistant to our conventional cures and strategies. In just a moment, I’ll show how poetry is the perfect tool for this challenge. But first,…
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Let’s be real. With climate change, we keep hitting one emergency tripwire after another. An all-time high-temperature record here, a melting ice shelf there, followed by new dire warnings that are increasingly hard to ignore. It’s exhausting and scary. It is beginning to feel like that thought experiment where we’re told to imagine how many…
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I crave pardon from the gods of language, for not reading more of her work. I will cure that condition in the coming months. It is Toni Morrison’s passing that prompts these thoughts and words. We’ve lost a great artist, writer and human being. It is fitting we take time to note her death and…
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Like a great poem, a powerful museum can change how we see and experience the world. For me, I am particularly vulnerable to both great poems and powerful museums. I lose all my normal defenses. I become wonderfully reckless and irresponsible! These are the places where there are shocking insights and surprises lurking at every turn…
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How many of us spend far too much time, loaded down with what we did not want or plan to be doing in this life? Common, unglamorous things, we judge neither exciting, nor particularly heroic. Also, haven’t most of us concluded we aren’t as beautiful, talented, or as smart as we had hoped we might…
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