Click Here to Read: 60 Years Since the Murder of Jewish Intellectuals in the Soviet Union on the Nation of Israel website.
Click Here to Read: Remembering the Night of the Murdered Soviet Yiddish Poets by Masha Leon on the Forward Website on August 17, 2015.
Click Here to Read: Stalin and the Night of the Murdered Poets By Eli Kavon in the Jerusalem Post on August 11, 2015. Continue reading 60 Years Since the Murder of Jewish Intellectuals in the Soviet Union
On the Occasion of Hiroshima Day we thought it fitting to share the following poem by Lawrence L. Schwartz. He introduces it with the following words:
On July 11, 2016, I was privileged to read my “Poem on Blind Faith” at the United Nations Chapel, in my role as an interfaith minister, as one of the guests at an interfaith program organized by Guruji Dileepkumar Thankappan. (Text of poem follows link to video.)
Click Here to View: Lawrence L. Schwartz reading the poem on YouTube.
“A Poem on Blind Faith”
When religion is based on fear, not Love,
You cannot feel that God’s within,
You’re stuck with the fear of “that God above,”
And spend your days in dreading “sin,” Continue reading Poem on Blind Faith by Lawrence L. Schwartz
Charles Harper Webb
Instead of poems today, we’re sharing an article I consider so important that no one interested in contemporary poetry should fail to read and consider. It’s from Charles Harper Webb’s new book, A Million MFAS Are Not Enough, forthcoming next month from Red Hen Press. We would welcome your comments after you’ve read it.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Click Here to Read: The Limits of Indeterminancy: In Defense of Short Poems by Charles Harper Webb. This poem originally appeared in Writers’ Chronicle, September 2015.
POETRY MONDAY: JULY 4, 2016
Henry Seiden
Happy Independence Day, everyone – at least, those of you who are in or from the U.S.A. We shouldn’t forget that we are part of an international conversation.
Our poet today, Henry Seiden, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who lives and practices in Forest Hills, New York. In his professional role, he is a member of the Board of Editors of Psychoanalytic Psychology and Division/Review, journals of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association. Within that role, he is co-author of Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide (Scribner’s, 1988), which has been translated into Chinese, Portuguese and Russian. Among his professional papers, some of which overlap with his knowledge of poetry and skill as a poet, are articles on Wallace Stevens and on using poetry in psychotherapy with children. He is also Poetry Editor of Division/Review. Continue reading Poetry Monday: Henry Seiden
Click Here to Read: What’s The Matter With Poetry? For Ben Lerner, poems are the perfect medium for failure. So how can they negotiate with the politics of real life? BY Ken Chen in The New Republic on June 23, 2016.
Luigi Cherubini And The Muse Of Lyric Poetry, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1842.Musée du Louvre
We have news this month about a number of our featured poets – some of it very sad and some quite happy indeed. The dates in parentheses after their names show when they appeared on these pages. If you look them up in our archives, you will be able to see their photos, learn a bit more about them, and read or re-read a few of their poems.
First, the sad news. Two more are no longer with us. Joan Peronto (October 2009), died of heart failure last month, still young at 85. Michelle Gillett (November 2012), only 68 years old, also died recently, and very suddenly, of cancer. These two poets and friends from Berkshire County, Massachusetts, who contributed strongly to our poetry lives here and elsewhere, will be greatly missed. Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: June 6, 2016
POETRY MONDAY: May 1, 2016
Merridawn Duckler
Was there ever a poet with a name more perfect for spring?
If you haven’t heard of Merridawn Duckler before, it’s because you may have been following only one art form. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in poetry journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Cirque Journal, Fifth Wednesday and many others. Her recent fiction has been published in Farallon Review and Poetica. Her play in verse was in the Emerging Female Playwright Festival of the Manhattan Shakespeare Project, and other plays Continue reading Poetry Monday: Merridawn Duckler
PRIBOR 1856
Dreams were born here
When he recognized
we were throwing away
The core of knowledge
Seduced as we were by
Surface glitter, manifest
Displays of light, the deeper
Dark ignored as if night’s
Waiting rooms
Were empty and all its ghosts
Not worth our interest,
As if limbs of desire didn’t
Flash and fling mystery about,
In tumult and scream,
As if stars couldn’t see
In the dark, as if folly Continue reading Pribor 1856 by Eugene Mahon
