A Poem for You: A Wartime Dream by Lesyk Panasiuk

2025-04-03T16:27:25-04:00

A Wartime Dream Lesyk Panasiuk translated from the Ukrainian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky Emptiness lives inside a radio  and newspapers are now printed without letters. I walk up the street but I don’t (do I?) hear my own steps. I notice an acquaintance across the street, and call out to him to say  hello, but bullets of silence fly from my mouth. I start shouting with my hands but my fingers are bent, crooked at my fingers. But it’s just (or is it?) a dream, just a dream which pretends it is an emptiness, inside a radio.      ТІЛЬКИБ СОН Радіо всередині пусте і чорне і газети тепер друкують без букв Іду вулицею але не чую власних кроків помічаю знайомого з іншого боку вулиці і гукаю його щоб привітатись але з мого рота вилітають кулі мовчання які чомусь не схожі на кулі тиші Починаю кричати йому руками але мої пальці вигнуті мої пальці криві й покручені Та це тільки сон тільки сон   [...]

A Poem for You: A Wartime Dream by Lesyk Panasiuk2025-04-03T16:27:25-04:00

A Poem for You: Ways to Measure Trees by MaKshya Tolbert

2025-02-11T10:40:52-05:00

Ways to Measure Trees MaKshya Tolbert         Level II: Basic Assessment All my life I was a hammer: I struck at everything I touched. Then I commit a few Thursdays to trees. I am not gentle but I could be. Around one tree, I try my basic circling steps, tap the tree’s bark with my mallet and listen for the difference: alive? dead? alive? dead? alive? still alive? I muscle coils of clay and learn the same lesson again and again– could be clay trees family trees literal trees: I hear the precarious things. I go phone-my-forester asking [...]

A Poem for You: Ways to Measure Trees by MaKshya Tolbert2025-02-11T10:40:52-05:00

Writing at Its Best

2025-01-18T13:49:44-05:00

Writing at Its Best By Eliza Browning Whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, or personal narrative, especially lyrical and well-crafted prose can resonate with you long after you’ve finished reading. Memorable writing often shares several qualities: the vivid and striking use of language, moments that illuminate wider messages or themes in the text, the connection of a character’s personal experience to bigger ideas underlying the narrative, and an exploration of the human condition that causes you to look at the world in a new way. Passages from three novels, The Great Gatsby, The Idiot, and Greek Lessons, especially resonate with me because of [...]

Writing at Its Best2025-01-18T13:49:44-05:00

Capital Letters

2025-01-18T13:46:26-05:00

Capital Letters By John Weeren The conventions of our language are not immutable. Grammar and usage are ever-changing, and what was true of the 18th century is no longer true of ours. Capitalization is a case in point. When, in 1726, Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels, it was customary to capitalize common nouns, yielding a sentence like this: "Having therefore consulted with my Wife, and some of my Acquaintance, I determined to go again to Sea." By the 19th century, capital letters were being used more sparingly, as Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, published in 1818, attests: "Her tranquility was not improved [...]

Capital Letters2025-01-18T13:46:26-05:00

A Poem for you: Sufficient by Ina Donna Coolbrith

2024-11-20T16:16:50-05:00

Sufficient Ina Donna Coolbrith Citron, pomegranate, Apricot, and peach, Flutter of apple-blows Whiter than the snow, Filling the silence With their leafy speech, Budding and blooming Down row after row. Breaths of blown spices, Which the meadows yield, Blossoms broad-petaled, Starry buds and small; Gold of the hill-sides, Purple of the field, Waft to my nostrils Their fragrance, one and all. Birds in the tree-tops, Birds that fill the air, Trilling, piping, singing, In their merry moods, — Gold wing and brown wing, Flitting here and here, To the coo and chirrup Of their downy broods. What grace has summer Better [...]

A Poem for you: Sufficient by Ina Donna Coolbrith2024-11-20T16:16:50-05:00

A Poem for you: Stories by Amber McCrary

2024-11-20T16:14:23-05:00

Stories Amber McCrary You are a Diné woman A cosmic energy of earth and sky Nihimá Nahasdzáán Azhé’é DiyiníWinter is over So, we put our stories in the drawer Then we take them out for the next winter It is said stories are only told in the winter So, the bears and snakes do not hear them My father is not a traditional man But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth of our people He knows the ways of our land But denies it all One day I tell him [...]

A Poem for you: Stories by Amber McCrary2024-11-20T16:14:23-05:00

A Poem for you: Ars Poetica by Kenyatta Rogers

2024-11-20T16:11:34-05:00

Ars Poetica Kenyatta Rogers After Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez Poems are bullshit unless they are broken  like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs,  Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm. Love can make you feel used. I want the poem that limps back to me. Poems should hurt like love, like ice water on your teeth like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle. Give me the poem that’s like leather. Give me the poem that smells like gasoline. I want a poem that is a warning, a poem that makes me check to see if I [...]

A Poem for you: Ars Poetica by Kenyatta Rogers2024-11-20T16:11:34-05:00

Word of the Week: absquatulate (ăb-SKWŎCH-ə-lāt)

2024-11-20T13:14:24-05:00

Word of the Week: absquatulate (ăb-SKWŎCH-ə-lāt) Definition (Verb) To abscond, make off. In Context "Residents of the Gulf States coined the term 'absquatulate' to describe men who left the state to avoid their debts in order to 'squat' in the new republic." Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, 2012.

Word of the Week: absquatulate (ăb-SKWŎCH-ə-lāt)2024-11-20T13:14:24-05:00

A Poem for You: Chinese Dream 61 by Timothy Yu 

2024-10-22T10:58:15-04:00

Chinese Dream 61 Timothy Yu  Cartoons. Computer-generated smiles and fixed eyes fill my daughter’s screen, show her form is content, content form. She’s over unicorns. Now she plays a child who always knows best. There’s nothing to fear except when we near an evening when the moon’s not giving light, turning away. It’s late for attitude, but it’s now that rude words are a parent’s heritance. Is she white? Race is something her father has, a way of arresting play away from her, in Timothy’s long trail of ancestors, immigrants, grasping arms out of elsewhere, of whom she’ll be one. The [...]

A Poem for You: Chinese Dream 61 by Timothy Yu 2024-10-22T10:58:15-04:00

Word of the Week: ductility (dŭk-TĬL-ĭ-tē)

2024-10-24T13:22:38-04:00

ductility (dŭk-TĬL-ĭ-tē) Definition (Noun) Capability of being easily led or influenced; tractableness, docility. In Context "Bingley was endeared to Darcy by the easiness, openness, ductility of his temper, though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied." Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.

Word of the Week: ductility (dŭk-TĬL-ĭ-tē)2024-10-24T13:22:38-04:00

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