Books

Blog

18 Sep

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Welcome back, and welcome to the book party! I'm celebrating the just-now publication of my eighth collection of poetry, Harvesting Darkness, by Spinifex Press. It's available from Amazon and other online sources as well as from bookstores. I'm truly proud of it; I think it's the best work I've done yet, and I hope you are moved by it. A few words about the book itself: many of the poems are shaped formally (sonnets, for example). I found such structure helpful in engaging the dark subjects and themes we are all living through, including aging, political anger, environmental angst, and the fragility of life. Yet the very insistence of that life simply refuses to be denied, showing itself most consistently and affirmatively in the guise of art. That's the real underlying current of the book, and I offer a sample here. The Frequency Federal prosecutors in Brazil opened an investigation into a...

05 Jun

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

The philosopher Susanne K. Langer wrote, “The notion of giving something a name is the vastest generative idea that ever was conceived.”...

29 May

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
I'm not a Catholic and not a child and decidedly not a little boy. Yet this story, covered in depth by Ruth Graham of the New York Times earlier this month, haunts me.

15 May

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
I often think that every disadvantaged — hell, call it what it is: oppressed – group must endure certain ritualistic phases imposed by its oppressors.

01 May

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Recently, I was having a conversation with a woman—a new acquaintance, highly intelligent, a theatre actor, and a feminist—who said she was finding herself furious at young people these days.

10 Apr

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Here's a story that is of quite stunning importance to our country. As the United States adjusts to an increasingly nonreligious population, thousands of churches are closing every year.

27 Mar

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
I sometimes love to redefine stuff--concepts, ideas, certainly stereotypes--stuff that we were certain we had already settled and were positive about.

20 Mar

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights, once and for all. --Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995 UN Conference on Women, Beijing, China. Please settle in, because this may take awhile. I write it with a heavy heart.