Have you ever had a feeling of numbness around a part of your body you identified as your soul? A kind of bone-deep sadness and weariness. I feel that now. Of course, I could tell you about events in my life. But remembering how the poet, Mary Oliver once put it I know many could…
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Who can deny the political strife and civil coarseness of our times? And have you seen Al Gore’s new film about the latest ravages of climate change? What about the white supremacists marching in the streets of Charlottesville and the young woman who died that day? And yet, that is not all the news. There…
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Be warned, poetry has its downsides and its wild sides. It may seem innocent enough, but like a calm ocean, it can produce sneaker waves you’ll never see coming. Of course, some poetry instantly puts us off because of its ambiguity or paradoxically because of its offending clarity. These poems are easy to spot however,…
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“Poems we love are just songs we must sing again and again.” –dale biron As an average or even avid reader of poems, we should know how badly we are outmatched. It’s not fair how poems say what they don’t mean one minute, then mean what they don’t say the next. Writers of poems are surely on to…
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The half-life of my courage can be short. I need small, consistent boosts of inspiration. Poems work well! –Dale Biron For many friends and loved ones, this is a time of deep cultural anxiety. There is a feeling that this time it’s more than simply partisan bickering, but that the fabric of our very democracy…
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All poems are discovered poems, and those we love, miracles. Whether we luckily find and read a poem written by someone else, or stealthily stumble upon one that we ourselves write. The love and the process for me are virtually the same. Again, both are miracles. And miracles happen in our minds, hearts and souls….
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Let’s be gentle with ourselves. Try to stay calm. And if not calm, a little less anxious. This has been a pretty rough election cycle. But as an old political science major, I can’t deny it’s also been strangely exciting and gratitude-provoking. What…? It’s true, gratitude sometimes arrives in paradoxical packages. Meaning of course, we can’t be grateful for what…
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The little piece of writing below (maybe a poem) recently scurried into a page of my notebook during one of my morning writing sessions. Later I realized it must have bubbled up from a recent conversation with a psychotherapist friend of mine about how challenging it can be to keep our deepest promises. I mean the…
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